Laws and Symmetry

✍ Scribed by Bas C. van Fraassen

• Book ID: 105727307
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Year: 1990
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 202 KB
• Series: Clarendon Paperbacks
• Category: Library
• ISBN-13: 9780198248606

✦ Synopsis

Metaphysicians speak of laws of nature in terms of necessity and universality, and that conception played a role in the birth of modern physics some centuries ago, but today physicists speak in terms of symmetry, transformations, and invariance. Laws and Symmetry's three main objectives are: first, to show the failure of current philosophical accounts of laws of nature; second, to refute arguments for the reality of laws of nature; third, to contrib ute to an epistemology and a philosophy of science antithetical to such metaphysical notions. The latter involves an inquiry into the character and role of symmetry and of symmetry arguments in the physical sciences.