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Ideal Reaction Types and the Reactions of Real Alloys
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2022
Extract
Scientists must often solve analytically or computationally intractable problems. Philosophers of science have problematized the nature and role of laws, theories and evidence by examining how scientists use abstractions (Cartwright 1990), idealizations (Laymon 1985, Brezinski et. al. 1990), approximations (Cartwright 1983; Laymon 1989; Ramsey 1990, 1992), and visual images (Wimsatt 1991, Ruse 1991) in such situations. Here, I problematize the nature and role of concepts by examining ideal types as a response to intractability. I focus on the work of Carl Wagner, a former director of the Max Planck Institute for Physical Chemistry in Goettingen. Wagner used ideal types in his research on the oxidation of metal alloys during the middle third of this century.
I argue that: natural scientists do use ideal typical concepts; these concepts are distinct from ‘standard’ concepts; and ideal typical concepts provide one means of connecting a tractable theoretical model with the experimental evidence.
- Type
- Part IV. Philosophy of Chemistry
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- Copyright © 1994 by the Philosophy of Science Association
Footnotes
1
This is a much changed version of a paper read at the 9th International Congress for Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science. Many thanks to the audience there for stimulating questions and comments. The original research was conducted as a Walter Rathenau fellow with the Verbund fuer Wissenschaftsgeschichte. Final revisions were completed while a post-doctoral fellow with the Center for the Philosophy of Science at the University of Minnesota. I wish to express my thanks to these institutions for their support and their hospitality.
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