Hostname: page-component-54dcc4c588-5q6g5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-09-16T04:50:08.797Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Laws and Statistical Mechanics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Eric Winsberg
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper explores some connections between competing conceptions of scientific laws on the one hand, and a problem in the foundations of statistical mechanics on the other. I examine two proposals for understanding the time asymmetry of thermodynamic phenomenal: David Albert's recent proposal and a proposal that I outline based on Hans Reichenbach's “branch systems”. I sketch an argument against the former, and mount a defense of the latter by showing how to accommodate statistical mechanics to recent developments in the philosophy of scientific laws.

Information

Type
Laws, Possibility, and the New Instrumentalism
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers , December 2004 , pp. 707 - 718
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Albert, David (2000), Time and Chance. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Callender, Craig (2001), “Taking Thermodynamics Too Seriously”, Taking Thermodynamics Too Seriously 32(4): 539–553.Google Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy (1999), The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cartwright, Nancy (1983), How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davies, P. C. W. (1977), The Physics of Time Asymmetry. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Frisch, Mathias (2000), “(Dis-)Solving the Puzzle of the Arrow of Radiation”, (Dis-)Solving the Puzzle of the Arrow of Radiation 51:381–410.Google Scholar
Giere, Ronald N. (1988), Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Giere, Ronald N. (1999), Science without Laws. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Lebowitz, Joel L. (1999), “Statistical Mechanics: A Selective Review of Two Central Issues”, Statistical Mechanics: A Selective Review of Two Central Issues 71:S346–357.Google Scholar
Reichenbach, Hans (1956), The Direction of Time. Berkeley: University of California Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sklar, Lawrence (1993), Physics and Chance: Philosophical Issues in the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Teller, Paul (2001), “Whither Constructive Empiricism”, Whither Constructive Empiricism 106:123–150.Google Scholar
Winsberg, Eric (2004), “Can Conditioning on the ‘Past Hypothesis’ Militate against the Reversibility Objections?” Philosophy of Science 71(4): 489–504.CrossRefGoogle Scholar