Nancy Cartwright - How the Laws of Physics Lie

Cartwright, Nancy Associate Professor of Philosophy, Stanford University, California

How the Laws of Physics Lie

Print ISBN 0198247044, 1983
doi:10.1093/0198247044.001.0001

Abstract: Nancy Cartwright argues for a novel conception of the role of fundamental scientific laws in modern natural science. If we attend closely to the manner in which theoretical laws figure in the practice of science, we see that despite their great explanatory power these laws do not describe reality. Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models. Thus, the correct account of explanation in science is not the traditional covering law view, but the 'simulacrum' account. On this view, explanation is a matter of constructing a model that may employ, but need not be consistent with, a theoretical framework, in which phenomenological laws that are true of the empirical case in question can be derived. Anti-realism about theoretical laws does not, however, commit one to anti-realism about theoretical entities. Belief in theoretical entities can be grounded in well-tested localized causal claims about concrete physical processes, sometimes now called 'entity realism'. Such causal claims provide the basis for partial realism and they are ineliminable from the practice of explanation and intervention in nature.
Keywords: covering law,models,realism,scientific laws,simulacrum,entity realism,explanation in science

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The author acknowledges permission to use previously published material in this volume. The provenance of the essays is as follows:

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Introduction

Nancy Cartwright

Philosophers distinguish phenomenological from theoretical laws. Phenomenological laws are about appearances; theoretical ones are about the reality behind the appearances. The distinction is rooted in epistemology. Phenomenological laws are about things which we can at least in principle observe directly, whereas theoretical laws can be known only by indirect inference. Normally for philosophers 'phenomenological' and 'theoretical' mark the distinction between the observable and the unobservable.

Physicists also use the terms 'theoretical' and 'phenomenological'. But their usage makes a different distinction. Physicists contrast 'phenomenological' with 'fundamental'. For example, Pergamon Press's Encyclopaedic Dictionary of Physics says, 'A phenomenological theory relates observed phenomena by postulating certain equations but does not enquire too deeply into their fundamental significance.'

The dictionary mentions observed phenomena. But do not be misled. These phenomenological equations are not about direct observables that contrast with the theoretical entities of the philosopher. For look where this definition occursunder the heading 'Superconductivity and superfluidity, phenomenological theories of'. Or notice the theoretical entities and processes mentioned in the contents of a book like