Dardashti, Radin and Fischer, Enno and Harlander, Robert (2025) The life cycle of scientific principles – a template for characterizing physical principles. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Scientific principles can undergo various developments. While philosophers of science have acknowledged that such changes occur, there is no systematic account of the development of scientific principles. Here we propose a template for analyzing the development of scientific principles called the ‘life cycle’ of principles. It includes a series of processes that principles can go through: prehistory, elevation, formalization, generalization, and challenge. The life cycle, we argue, is a useful heuristic for the analysis of the development of scientific principles. We illustrate this by discussing examples from foundational physics including Lorentz invariance, Mach’s principle, the naturalness principle, and the perfect cosmological principle. We also explore two applications of the template. First, we propose that the template can be employed to diagnose the quality of scientific principles. Second, we discuss the ramifications of the life cycle’s processes for the empirical testability of principles.
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| Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||||||||
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| Keywords: | Scientific principles, Lorentz invariance, Mach’s principle, naturalness, testability | ||||||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Confirmation/Induction Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Theory Change |
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| Depositing User: | Enno Fischer | ||||||||||||
| Date Deposited: | 20 Feb 2025 14:44 | ||||||||||||
| Last Modified: | 20 Feb 2025 14:44 | ||||||||||||
| Item ID: | 24774 | ||||||||||||
| Subjects: | General Issues > Confirmation/Induction Specific Sciences > Physics General Issues > Theory Change |
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| Date: | 2025 | ||||||||||||
| URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/24774 |
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