September 2017 Lunchtime Abstracts & Details

Prediction, Fashion, and the Future of Science
Nicholas Rescher
University of Pittsburgh, Dept. of Philosophy
Friday, Sept. 8, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R CL

Abstract:  The paper will examine and illustrate the role of fashion in science and its philosophy.

The Emergence of Absolute Time: A Conceptual Framework
Geoffrey Gorham, Visiting Fellow
Malacaster College
Tuesday, Sept. 12, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R CL

Abstract:  Historians and philosophers of science have devoted considerable attention to the modern development of the concepts of space, matter and force. Less attention has been given to time. In the late Aristotelian schools, time was understood as distinct from motion and thought only in a conceptual or ‘imaginary’ sense. By the late seventeenth century, culminating in Newton, time was endowed with an intrinsic reality and structure independent of motion and thought. I will propose a general framework for understanding the emergence and embrace of absolute time in seventeenth century natural philosophy. The main elements of this framework are: (i) the technical distinction between time and duration; (ii) the heuristic principle that time is analogous to space; (iii) the increasing association of God and time; (iv) the enthusiasm for geometrization. My presentation will touch on numerous seventeenth century systems and figures but gives special consideration to Descartes, Locke and Newton.

Külpe, Feigl, and American Critical Realism
Matthias Neuber, Visiting Fellow
University of Tübingen
Friday, Sept. 15, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R CL

Abstract: Oswald Külpe can be regarded as an important forerunner of modern scientific realism. By distinguishing “critical” realism from “naïve” realism he took the essential step in that direction. While naïve realism, in his view, conferred sense qualities upon the natural objects perceived, critical realism correlated natural objects with – essentially unintuitive – theoretical concepts. Accordingly, critical realism, for Külpe,
was tightly connected with a theory of abductive reasoning which, in turn, found its most explicit articulation in the context of Külpe’s encompassing – and highly original – idea of Realisierung (“realization”). As I will point out in my talk, Külpe’s idea played a formative role for the early Herbert Feigl and eventually reappeared in the latter’s later writings. Moreover, I will shed some light on so-called American critical realism which,
as a broader movement, emerged around 1920. Defended by thinkers such as C. A. Strong, George Santayana, and especially Roy Wood Sellars, American critical realism shared many parallels with Külpe’s own conception. However, there were also significant divergences, so that a deeper look will be appropriate.

Universality, Stability, Autonomy, and Scales
Robert Batterman
University of Pittsburgh, Department of Philosophy
Tuesday, Sept. 19, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R CL

Abstract: I discuss the concept of universality, specifically of physical phenomena, and even more specifically of the behavior of critical phenomena. In the philosophical literature, I believe, this concept has been widely misunderstood. In particular, a number of recent attempts to formulate what counts as an explanation for the
possibility of universal behavior are misguided because they fail to properly understand what the explanandum is. A proper explanation involves recognizing that universality implies a kind of stability of behavior under perturbation. Furthermore, this stability itself requires explanation. I relate the explanation of the stability characteristic of universality to the autonomy of certain models or theories at continuum scales from those and scales of the molecular or atomic.

Rethinking the Epistemology and Ontology of Spacetime:
the Einstein-Lorentz-Poincaré Connection
Pablo Acuña Luongo, Visiting Fellow
Universidad Católica de Valparaíso, Chile
Friday, Sept. 22, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R CL

Abstract:  Henri Poincaré introduced a famous argument for the conventionality of physical geometry, which was later touched-up by Hans Reichenbach. Two significant drawbacks in its assessment are that i) concrete instances in the history of physics have not been identified, and that ii) Reichenbach’s universal forces, which are crucial for the argument, seem to be by definition empirically undetectable. I propose that the case of Lorentz’s ether theory vs. Einstein’s special relativity can be taken as a concrete historical example, in which the universal forces involved certainly have an empirical import, that we can use to evaluate the cogency of Poincaré’s argument—with the interesting twist that the alleged conventionality concerns physical chronogeometry rather than physical geometry. I will argue that this case-study allows to draw a more nuanced lesson from Poincaré’s argument. Such a lesson sheds light on the discussion about the explanatory style and power of special relativity (and of spacetime theories in general), and it allows a stance on the debate about the ontology of spacetime that stands as a tertium quid in the substantivalism-relationism dichotomy.

Applying Measures of Meaning in HPS
Colin Allen, Senior Visiting Fellow
University of Pittsburgh, Department of HPS
Tuesday, Sept. 26, 2017
12:05 pm, 817R CL

Abstract: Recent advances in computational text mining have produced increasingly useful models of semantic similarity such as LSA (Latent Semantic Analysis) and LDA (Latent Dirichlet Allocation) topic models. In this talk, representing work in progress, I will describe our current work with LDA topic models of Darwin’s readings and writings and discuss the potential applications of such models to general questions in the philosophy of science.