Idealized and perspectival representations: some reasons for making a distinction

Synthese 191 (8):1831-1845 (2014)
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Abstract

I argue that an adequate understanding of the practice of constructing models in physics requires a distinction between two strategies that are commonly both labeled ‘idealization’. The formal characteristic of both methods is to let a parameter in the equations for a target system go to zero. But the discussion of examples from various applications of perturbation theory shows that there is in general a difference with respect to the aims such limiting procedures are supposed to serve; and with different aims comes the need to characterize the means (the interpretation of the limits) differently. I therefore suggest that we distinguish ‘idealizations’ from ‘perspectives’ or perspectival representations

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Alexander Rueger
University of Alberta

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References found in this work

Scientific Representation: Paradoxes of Perspective.Bas C. Van Fraassen - 2008 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press UK.
Scientific perspectivism.Ronald N. Giere - 2006 - Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Three Kinds of Idealization.Michael Weisberg - 2007 - Journal of Philosophy 104 (12):639-659.
Idealization and modeling.Robert W. Batterman - 2009 - Synthese 169 (3):427-446.
The Tyranny of Scales.Robert W. Batterman - 2013 - In Robert Batterman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Physics. Oxford University Press USA. pp. 255-286.

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