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A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Formalism

wilson, mark (2006) A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Formalism. [Preprint]

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Abstract

Attempts to arrange all of classical mechanics upon a self-contained basis encounter difficulties due to "the lousy encyclopedia phenomenon": hard cases involving, e.g., billiard balls, often require that the standard treatments be abandoned in favor of conceptually different accounts. Worse yet, these chains of interdependence often travel in circular loops, where the practitioner is returned to formalisms that she had previously abandoned. However, behaviors of this sort are to be expected if classical doctrine is instead viewed as a "reduced variable" covering of quantum mechanics, which is the point of view that this essay recommends.


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Item Type: Preprint
Creators:
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wilson, mark
Keywords: classical mechanics; foundations
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics
General Issues > Structure of Theories
Depositing User: mark wilson
Date Deposited: 21 May 2006
Last Modified: 07 Oct 2010 15:14
Item ID: 2745
Subjects: Specific Sciences > Physics > Classical Physics
General Issues > Structure of Theories
Date: May 2006
URI: https://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/id/eprint/2745

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