The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science Advance Access originally published online on July 20, 2005
The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 2005 56(3):579-594; doi:10.1093/bjps/axi128
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Perspectival Models and Theory Unification
Department of Philosophy, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T6G 2E5 alex.rueger{at}ualberta.ca
Given that scientific realism is based on the assumption that there is a connection between a model's predictive success and its truth, and given the success of multiple incompatible models in scientific practice, the realist has a problem. When the different models can be shown to arise as different approximations to a unified theory, however, one might think the realist to be able to accommodate such cases. I discuss a special class of models (generated as non-uniform limits of a unified theory) and argue that a realist interpretation has to understand these models of a system as ‘perspectival’, in close analogy to different spatial perspectives onto the same object. For this sort of case, I also respond to Morrison's recent claim that in the process of unifying models into an overarching theory, explanatory and descriptive power are lost, leaving the unified theory with less of a claim to a realist interpretation than the models themselves.
- Introduction
- Perspectival models from singular perturbation problems
- Unification of perspectives without losses of explanatory power
- Perspectives as different levels of a system
- Perspectival models, idealizations and pluralism