Miller, Michael (2020) Worldly Imprecision. [Preprint]
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Abstract
Physical theories often characterize their observables with real number precision. Many non-fundamental theories do so needlessly: they are more precise than they need to be to capture the physical matters of fact about their observables. A natural expectation is that a truly fundamental theory will require its full precision in order to exhaustively capture all of the fundamental physical matters of fact. I argue against this expectation and I show that we do not have good reason to expect that the standard of precision set by successful theories, or even by a truly fundamental theory, will match the granularity of the physical facts.
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Item Type: | Preprint | ||||||
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Keywords: | classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, quantities, empirical success, fundamentality | ||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics General Issues > Models and Idealization Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics General Issues > Theory/Observation |
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Depositing User: | Mr. Michael E. Miller | ||||||
Date Deposited: | 04 Jun 2020 01:34 | ||||||
Last Modified: | 04 Jun 2020 01:34 | ||||||
Item ID: | 17276 | ||||||
Subjects: | General Issues > Scientific Metaphysics Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics General Issues > Models and Idealization Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Field Theory Specific Sciences > Physics > Quantum Mechanics General Issues > Theory/Observation |
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Date: | 3 June 2020 | ||||||
URI: | https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/17276 |
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