33 ideas
| 16554 | Activities have place, rate, duration, entities, properties, modes, direction, polarity, energy and range [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 17486 | Supervenience is simply modally robust property co-variance [Hendry] |
| 16556 | Penicillin causes nothing; the cause is what penicillin does [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16562 | We understand something by presenting its low-level entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 22189 | Why abandon a theory if you don't have a better one? [Gorham] |
| 22190 | If a theory is more informative it is less probable [Gorham] |
| 22192 | Is Newton simpler with universal simultaneity, or Einstein simpler without absolute time? [Gorham] |
| 22194 | Structural Realism says mathematical structures persist after theory rejection [Gorham] |
| 22195 | Structural Realists must show the mathematics is both crucial and separate [Gorham] |
| 22196 | For most scientists their concepts are not just useful, but are meant to be true and accurate [Gorham] |
| 22197 | Theories aren't just for organising present experience if they concern the past or future [Gorham] |
| 22193 | Consilience makes the component sciences more likely [Gorham] |
| 16563 | The explanation is not the regularity, but the activity sustaining it [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16555 | Functions are not properties of objects, they are activities contributing to mechanisms [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16529 | Mechanisms are systems organised to produce regular change [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16530 | A mechanism explains a phenomenon by showing how it was produced [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16553 | Our account of mechanism combines both entities and activities [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16559 | Descriptions of explanatory mechanisms have a bottom level, where going further is irrelevant [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16528 | Mechanisms are not just push-pull systems [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 17481 | Nuclear charge (plus laws) explains electron structure and spectrum, but not vice versa [Hendry] |
| 16564 | There are four types of bottom-level activities which will explain phenomena [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 16561 | We can abstract by taking an exemplary case and ignoring the detail [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 22198 | Aristotelian physics has circular celestial motion and linear earthly motion [Gorham] |
| 17478 | Maybe two kinds are the same if there is no change of entropy on isothermal mixing [Hendry] |
| 17479 | The nature of an element must survive chemical change, so it is the nucleus, not the electrons [Hendry] |
| 17484 | Maybe the nature of water is macroscopic, and not in the microstructure [Hendry] |
| 17485 | Maybe water is the smallest part of it that still counts as water (which is H2O molecules) [Hendry] |
| 16558 | Laws of nature have very little application in biology [Machamer/Darden/Craver] |
| 17483 | Water continuously changes, with new groupings of molecules [Hendry] |
| 17482 | Compounds can differ with the same collection of atoms, so structure matters too [Hendry] |
| 17476 | Elements survive chemical change, and are tracked to explain direction and properties [Hendry] |
| 17477 | Defining elements by atomic number allowed atoms of an element to have different masses [Hendry] |
| 17480 | Generally it is nuclear charge (not nuclear mass) which determines behaviour [Hendry] |