Metaphysics and Science

Abstract

This volume brings together important new work within an emerging philosophical discipline: the metaphysics of science. In the opening chapter, a definition of the metaphysics of science is offered, one which explains why the topics of laws, causation, natural kinds, and emergence are at the discipline’s heart. The book is then divided into four sections, which group together papers from leading academics on each of those four topics. Among the questions discussed are: How are laws and measurement methods related? Can a satisfactory reductive account of laws be given? How can Lorentz transformation laws be explained? How are dispositions triggered? What role should dispositional properties play in our understanding of causation? Are natural kinds and natural properties distinct? How is the Kripke–Putnam semantics for natural kind terms related to the natural kind essentialist thesis? What would have to be the case for natural kind terms to have determinate reference? What bearing, if any, does nonlinearity in science have on the issue of metaphysical emergence?

Exploring the Interactions between Metaphysics and Science

“…Besides E. J. Lowe, Tuomas Tahko (2008), Anjan Chakravartty (2010Chakravartty ( , 2013, or Stephen Mumford and Matthew Tugby (2013), among others, also advocate for this approach. They offer different arguments to justify that it is metaphysics that makes science possible.…”

“…Furthermore, he claims, scientists are interested in studying the unobservable, i.e., those entities that are not directly empirically assessed but that serve to better explain the observable phenomena, and, in doing so, they turn to forms of speculation and methods that are not proper of science but of metaphysics (Chakravartty 2010, 63). In a similar vein, Mumford and Tugby (2013) claim that metaphysics refers to the study of the fundamental aspects of reality, such as "kindhood, lawhood, causal power and causation" that make science possible insofar as they impose order on the world (Mumford and Tugby 2013).…”