McCullough-Benner, Colin (2021) The Metarepresentational Role of Mathematics in Scientific Explanations. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Several philosophers have argued that to capture the generality of certain scientific explanations, we must count mathematical facts among their explanantia. I argue that we can better understand these explanations by adopting a more nuanced stance toward mathematical representations, recognizing the role of mathematical representation schemata in representing highly abstract features of physical systems. It is by picking out these abstract but non-mathematical features that explanations appealing to mathematics achieve a high degree of generality. The result is a rich conception of the role of mathematics in scientific explanations that does not require us to treat mathematical facts as explanantia.

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Item Type:	Preprint
Creators:	Creators Email ORCID McCullough-Benner, Colin C.M.McCullough-Benner@leeds.ac.uk
Keywords:	Mathematical explanation, mathematical representation, scientific explanation, scientific representation, explanatory generality, indispensability argument
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Applicability Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Explanation Specific Sciences > Mathematics
Depositing User:	Colin McCullough-Benner
Date Deposited:	08 Aug 2021 21:14
Last Modified:	08 Aug 2021 21:14
Item ID:	19423
Subjects:	Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Applicability Specific Sciences > Mathematics > Explanation Specific Sciences > Mathematics
Date:	8 August 2021
URI:	https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19423

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