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- Title
Schlick, Conventionalism, and Scientific Revolutions.
- Authors
Bland, Steven
- Abstract
Schlick quite clearly maintains that the shift from classical physics to the theories of relativity is not necessitated by experience, but motivated by the pragmatic payoff of simplifying space-time ontology. However, there is in his work another, heretofore unrecognized argument for the revolutionary shift from classical to relativistic physics. According to this conceptual line of argument, the principles that define simultaneity and motion in classical physics fail to establish a univocal correspondence to physical quantities, and therefore must be revised, along with the notions of absolute space and time that they underpin. Though these insights appear only intermittently in Schlick's work, I will seek to elaborate on them in an effort to clarify his views on conventions within physics and the nature of revolutionary science, and to suggest that these views are invulnerable to the criticisms of pragmatic empiricists such as Quine.
- Subjects
SCHLICK, Moritz; SCIENTIFIC Revolution; ONTOLOGY; CRITICISM (Philosophy); ARGUMENT; HOLISM; RELATIVITY (Physics)
- Publication
Acta Analytica, 2012, Vol 27, Issue 3, p307
- ISSN
0353-5150
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1007/s12136-011-0131-3