Philosophy of Physics

• Autores: Elise M. Crull
• Localización: Analysis, ISSN-e 1467-8284, Vol. 73, Nº. 4, 2013, págs. 771-784
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • 1. Introduction Undoubtedly the title of this article requires a qualifier. Such a wealth of interesting work has been done in philosophy of physics so far this century that I cannot describe it in any substantial depth here. However, many excellent overviews of recent work in the field have already been written, and beautifully so. In what follows I will therefore take a somewhat different tack from usual review articles: I will introduce the reader to those issues in recent philosophy of physics that might be of special interest to members of other philosophical sub-disciplines. By highlighting aspects of this field that overlap with epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of mathematics, logic and so on, I hope not only to complement extant reviews (which are typically written for a physics-inclined/trained audience), but furthermore to act as a guide for cross-disciplinary engagement on issues that will surely benefit from the attention of persons from a variety of backgrounds.

    For readers familiar with modern physics who desire technical surveys of current issues, I highly recommend both Elsevier�s Handbook of Philosophy of Physics (Butterfield and Earman 2006) and the Ashgate Companion to Contemporary Philosophy of Physics (Rickles 2008). For those with little or no physics background, read on. The sections below are roughly divided by physical theory or family of theories, though these divisions are more utilitarian than exemplars of categorical robustness. In each section, I update the status of canonical philosophical queries associated with the given theory, introduce interesting new debates and sketch areas of potential interest for those outside philosophy of physics.1 2. (Non-relativistic) quantum mechanics Quantum mechanics is still the most discussed theory in philosophy of physics by nearly an order of magnitude in terms of published pages. Traditionally, the philosophy of quantum mechanics has been framed with sole respect to two problems: the problem of measurement �