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Models, Confirmation, and Chaos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Jeffrey Koperski
Jeffrey Koperski*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Saginaw Valley State University
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Abstract

The use of idealized models in science is by now well-documented. Such models are typically constructed in a “top-down” fashion: starting with an intractable theory or law and working down toward the phenomenon. This view of model-building has motivated a family of confirmation schemes based on the convergence of prediction and observation. This paper considers how chaotic dynamics blocks the convergence view of confirmation and has forced experimentalists to take a different approach to model-building. A method known as “phase space reconstruction” not only reveals a lacuna in the philosophical literature on models, it also fails to conform to conventional views about how models are used to confirm a theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 65 , Issue 4 , December 1998 , pp. 624 - 648
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1998

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Footnotes

†

Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, Saginaw Valley State University, 7400 Bay Road, University Center, MI 48710.

‡

I would like to thank Robert Batterman, Mark Wilson, and Diana Raffman for many helpful comments and guidance through earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for Philosophy of Science.

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