The Kac Ring or the Art of Making Idealisations
| Autor: | Julie Jebeile |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2020 |
| Předmět: |
Philosophy of science
Ring (mathematics) 100 Philosophy Toy model Philosophy media_common.quotation_subject 05 social sciences Representation (systemics) General Physics and Astronomy 06 humanities and the arts Statistical mechanics 050905 science studies 0603 philosophy ethics and religion Scientific modelling Epistemology Phenomenon 060302 philosophy Astrophysics::Earth and Planetary Astrophysics 0509 other social sciences Function (engineering) media_common |
| Zdroj: | Jebeile, Julie (2020). The Kac ring or the art of making idealisations. Foundations of physics, 50(10), pp. 1152-1170. Springer 10.1007/s10701-020-00373-1 |
| ISSN: | 1572-9516 0015-9018 |
| DOI: | 10.1007/s10701-020-00373-1 |
| Popis: | In 1959, mathematician Mark Kac introduced a model, called the Kac ring, in order to elucidate the classical solution of Boltzmann to the problem of macroscopic irreversibility. However, the model is far from being a realistic representation of something. How can it be of any help here? In philosophy of science, it is often argued that models can provide explanations of the phenomenon they are said to approximate, in virtue of the truth they contain, and in spite of the idealisations they are made of. On this view, idealisations are not supposed to contribute to any explaining, and should not affect the global representational function of the model. But the Kac ring is a toy model that is only made of idealisations, and is still used trustworthily to understand the treatment of irreversible phenomena in statistical mechanics. In the paper, my aim is to argue that each idealisation ingeniously designed by the mathematician maintains the representational function of the Kac ring with the general properties of macroscopic irreversibility under scrutiny. Such an active role of idealisations in the representing has so far been overlooked and reflects the art of modelling. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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