Three Essays on the Constitutive a Priori

Download or read book Three Essays on the Constitutive a Priori written by Daniel Richard Olson and published by . This book was released on 2021 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The constitutive principles approach to scientific theories attempts to identify particular principles within science that serve unique roles in justifying or making possible the success of novel theories. The three essays that make up the bulk of this dissertation attempt to approach the topic of the constitutive a priori from various, previously unexplored angles. The first chapter extends the discussion of the constitutive a priori to a new area of contemporary physics – statistical mechanics. The Past Hypothesis is the claim that the universe came into being in a very low entropy state, and this hypothesis plays a major role in nearly all contemporary philosophical accounts of statistical mechanics. This chapter argues that the Past Hypothesis is best seen as a constitutive principle of statistical mechanics, and that this identification can help shed light on how the Past Hypothesis might be justified, given well-known problems regarding its confirmation. The second chapter updates the existing literature on constitutive a priori principles with a discussion of contemporary historical work on Newton and the scientific method of the Principia. It argues that this new work puts novel constraints on theories of constitutive principles. In particular, Newton’s evidential strategies in the Principia must be captured by any constitutive principles account of the laws of motion. Finally, the third chapter investigates the constitutive a priori in the context of historical epistemology, a tradition within philosophy of science focused on the role of local, historical conditions on the success of the sciences. This chapter argues that critiquing the constitutive principles approach from the perspective of historical epistemology allows us to diagnose some of the faults in existing constitutive principles approaches, and points the way to an improved, revised conception. The overarching lessons of this dissertation are three-fold. First, the constitutive principles approach can still be significantly clarified through additional attempts to expand its domain of applications beyond the space-time theories that Friedman initially focused on. Second, careful historical analysis, such as that done by George Smith and William Harper on Newton, can provide novel restrictions on the role of constitutive principles by making clear the heavy lifting they are required to do within scientific argument. Third, the constitutive principles approach needs to be criticized from a variety of angles within philosophy of science, as the literature thus far has focused too heavily on debates surrounding Quinean holism.