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Physical Composition

Healey, Richard A. (2011) Physical Composition. [Preprint]

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    Abstract

    Atomistic metaphysics motivated an explanatory strategy which science has pursued with great success since the scientific revolution. By decomposing matter into its atomic and subatomic parts physics gave us powerful explanations and accurate predictions as well as providing a unifying framework for the rest of science. The success of the decompositional strategy has encouraged a widespread conviction that the physical world forms a compositional hierarchy that physics and other sciences are progressively articulating. But this conviction does not stand up to a closer examination of how physics has treated composition, as a variety of case studies will show.

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    Item Type: Preprint
    Additional Information: Forthcoming in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
    Keywords: composition, reduction, metaphysics, physicalism, Standard Model, condensed matter
    Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics > Condensed Matter
    Specific Sciences > Physics
    Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory
    Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics
    General Issues > Reductionism/Holism
    Depositing User: Richard Andrew Healey
    Date Deposited: 23 May 2011 05:23
    Last Modified: 23 May 2011 05:23
    Item ID: 8621
    URI: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/8621

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