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Idealizations and Contextualism in Physics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Kevin Davey
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Abstract

Describing a physical system in idealized terms involves making claims about the system that we know to be literally false. Because of this, it is not clear how calculations involving idealizations can generate justified belief and explain facts about the world. I argue that this puzzling aspect of idealizations cannot be explained away by talking about approximations, as is often supposed. I develop a different account of how justified beliefs and explanations can be generated from idealized descriptions of physical systems. My account involves a type of contextualism about the truth of mathematical descriptions of physical systems.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 78 , Issue 1 , January 2011 , pp. 16 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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