Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-r6qrq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-29T14:40:12.383Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

A Bayesian Account of the Virtue of Unification

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Wayne C. Myrvold
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A Bayesian account of the virtue of unification is given. On this account, the ability of a theory to unify disparate phenomena consists in the ability of the theory to render such phenomena informationally relevant to each other. It is shown that such ability contributes to the evidential support of the theory, and hence that preference for theories that unify the phenomena need not, on a Bayesian account, be built into the prior probabilities of theories.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 70 , Issue 2 , April 2003 , pp. 399 - 423
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

The author is grateful to Bill Harper, Sona Ghosh, and three anonymous referees for Philosophy of Science for helpful comments and suggestions.

References

Adams, Marilyn McCord (1987), William Ockham, Vol. 1. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Butts, Robert E. (ed.) (1968), William Whewell’s Theory of Scientific Method. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Carnap, Rudolf (1962), Logical Foundations of Probability, 2d ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Chandrasekhar, Subrahmanyan (1995), Newton’s Principia for the Common Reader. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Copernicus, Nicolaus ([1543] 1976), Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. Translated by Duncan, A.M.. New York: Barnes & Noble Books.Google Scholar
Dijksterhuis, Eduard Jan (1961), The Mechanization of the World Picture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Forster, Malcolm R. (1988), “Unification, Explanation, and the Composition of Causes in Newtonian Mechanics”, Unification, Explanation, and the Composition of Causes in Newtonian Mechanics 19:55–101.Google Scholar
Forster, Malcolm, and Sober, Elliott (1994), “How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories Will Provide More Accurate Predictions”, How to Tell When Simpler, More Unified, or Less Ad Hoc Theories Will Provide More Accurate Predictions 45:1–35.Google Scholar
Friedman, Michael (1974), “Explanation and Scientific Understanding”, Explanation and Scientific Understanding 71:5–19.Google Scholar
Galilei, Galileo ([1632] 1953), Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. Translated by Drake, Stillman. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Herbert (1980), Classical Mechanics. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.Google Scholar
Good, Irving John (1950), Probability and the Weighing of Evidence. London: Charles Griffin & Company.Google Scholar
Good, Irving John (1966), “A Derivation of the Probabilistic Explication of Information”, A Derivation of the Probabilistic Explication of Information B 28:578–81.Google Scholar
Good, Irving John (1983), Good Thinking: The Foundations of Probability and Its Applications. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Harper, William (1989), “Consilience and Natural Kind Reasoning (in Newton’s Argument for Universal Gravitation)”, in Brown, James R. and Mittelstrass, Jürgen (eds.), An Intimate Relation. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 115–152.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, William (2002a), “Newton’s Argument for Universal Gravitation”, in Cohen, I. Bernard and Smith, George E. (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Newton. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 174–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Harper, William (2002b), “Howard Stein on Isaac Newton: Beyond Hypotheses?” in Malament, David B. (ed.), Reading Natural Philosophy: Essays in the History and Philosophy of Science and Mathematics. Chicago and La Salle, IL: Open Court, 71–112.Google Scholar
Hoskin, Michael (ed.) (1999), The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hoskin, Michael (1999), “Astronomy in Antiquity”, in Hoskin 1999, 18–47.Google Scholar
Hoskin, Michael, and Gingerich, Owen (1999), “Medieval Latin Astronomy”, in Hoskin 1999, 68–93.Google Scholar
Kepler, Johannes ([1596] 1981), Mysterium Cosmographicum: The Secret of the Universe. Translated by Duncan, A.M.. New York: Abaris Books.Google Scholar
Kuhn, Thomas S. (1959), The Copernican Revolution. New York: Random House.Google Scholar
Milne, Peter (1996). “log[P(h/eb)/P(h/b)] Is the One True Measure of Confirmation”, Philosophy of Science 63: 21–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myrvold, Wayne C. (1996), “Bayesianism and Diverse Evidence: A Reply to Andrew Wayne”, Bayesianism and Diverse Evidence: A Reply to Andrew Wayne 63:661–665.Google Scholar
Neugebauer, Otto (1957), The Exact Sciences in Antiquity. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.Google Scholar
Newton, Isaac ([1726] 1999), The Principia: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Translated by Cohen, I. Bernard and Whitman, Anne. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Niiniluoto, Ilkka, and Tuomela, Raimo (1973), Theoretical Concepts and Hypothetico-Inductive Inference. Dordrecht and Boston: D. Reidel Publishing Company.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ptolemy (1984), Ptolemy’s Almagest. Translated by Toomer, G.J.. London: Duckworth.Google Scholar
Rosen, Edward (1959), Three Copernican Treatises, 2d ed. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley C. (1975), “Confirmation and Relevance”, in Maxwell, Grover and Anderson, Robert M. Jr. (eds.), Induction, Probability, and Confirmation. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 13. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 3–36.Google Scholar
Shimony, Abner (1970), “Scientific Inference”, in Colodny, R.G. (ed.), Mind and Cosmos: Essays in Contemporary Science and Philosophy, Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 79–172. Reprinted (1993) in Search for a Naturalistic World View, Vol. I: Scientific Method and Epistemology, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 183–273Google Scholar
Thorburn, W.M. (1918), “The Myth of Occam’s Razor”, The Myth of Occam’s Razor 27:345–353.Google Scholar
van Fraassen, Bas C. (1989), Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whewell, William (1847), The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, Founded Upon Their History, 2d ed., Vol. 2, London: John W. Parker.Google Scholar
Whittaker, Edmund Taylor (1944), A Treatise on the Analytical Dynamics of Particles and Rigid Bodies. New York: Dover Publications.Google Scholar
Wingate, Edmond (1653), Maximes of Reason: or, the Reason of the Common Law of England. London: R.&W.L.Google Scholar