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 | ||||||
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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 |
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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 |
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Date: | 8 August 2021 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/19423 |
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