Structuralism About Scientific Representation

Thomson-Jones, Martin

doi:10.1007/978-90-481-9597-8_7

Cited by 3 publications

(1 citation statement)

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“…So the first task for a structuralist account of representation is to articulate what notion of structure it employs. A number of different notions of structure have been discussed in the literature (for a review see Thomson-Jones' (2011)), but by far the most common and widely used is the notion of structure one finds in set theory and mathematical logic. A structure S in that sense (sometimes 'mathematical structure' or 'set-theoretic structure') is a composite entity consisting of the following: a non-empty set U of objects called the domain (or universe) of the structure and a non-empty indexed set R of relations on U.…”

Section: Structures and The Problem Of Ontologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Models and Representation

Frigg

Nguyen

2017

Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science

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Section: Structures and The Problem Of Ontologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Models and Representation

Frigg

Nguyen

2017

Springer Handbook of Model-Based Science

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Representational Pluralism in Science Education

Flores-Camacho,

Gallegos-Cázares

2024

Sci & Educ

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This essay analyses the theme of representational pluralism in science education and a possible interpretation through the inferential-pragmatic conception of scientific representations. A brief description of two principal conceptions of scientific representations (the semantic-structural and the inferential-pragmatic conceptions) and their implications for unicity and plurality are presented to compare how those philosophical approaches can help understand representational plurality in science education. Subsequently, a brief analysis of different topics of science education is made to determine relevant classes of representational plurality in science education: Plurality and coexistence of representations in subjects in a school context; plurality in diverse cultural contexts; plurality by approaches and methods of research; plurality and perspectivism. In the discussion and conclusions, those classes of representational plurality are analysed from the inferential conception of representations, and themes such as proliferation, reduction, normativity, and building in plurality are discussed. The conclusions point to the understanding that representational plurality is not a subject’s deviation from the norm of scientific and school representations; instead, it is inherent to the subjects’ construction of representations, individually and collectively. Certainly, this implies that the separation from the semantic-structural approach of scientific representations must be accomplished by cancelling any similarity condition for representations. Plural representations imply that teaching requires the construction of new scenarios for students to consider the intentionality of representations and interpret them more coherently with the expectations of scientific disciplines in diverse cultural contexts.

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Goals shape means: a pluralist response to the problem of formal representation in ontic structural realism

Proszewska

2022

Synthese

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The aim of the paper is to assess the relative merits of two formal representations of structure, namely, set theory and category theory. The purpose is to articulate ontic structural realism (OSR). In turn, this will facilitate a discussion on the strengths and weaknesses of both concepts, and will lead to a proposal for a pragmatics-based approach to the question of the choice of an appropriate framework. First, we present a case study from contemporary science -a comparison of the formulation of quantum mechanics in a language of Hilbert spaces and abstract C -algebras. It is then shown how the method of structural representation can be determined based on the pragmatics of goal-oriented research, not a dogmatic choice. We investigate a hypothesis stating that use of the interplay between the powers of abstraction and detail of different representational methods results in adopting a pluralistic, as opposed to standard, unificatory, perspective on the role of structural representation in OSR.

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Structuralism About Scientific Representation

Cited by 3 publications

References 23 publications

Models and Representation

Models and Representation

Representational Pluralism in Science Education

Goals shape means: a pluralist response to the problem of formal representation in ontic structural realism

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