Hostname: page-component-7bb8b95d7b-cx56b Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-10-07T06:20:04.934Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Understanding and Equivalent Reformulations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Josh Hunt
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Reformulating a scientific theory often leads to a significantly different way of understanding the world. Nevertheless, accounts of both theoretical equivalence and scientific understanding have neglected this important aspect of scientific theorizing. This essay provides a positive account of how reformulation changes our understanding. My account simultaneously addresses a serious challenge facing existing accounts of scientific understanding. These accounts have failed to characterize understanding in a way that goes beyond the epistemology of scientific explanation. By focusing on cases in which we have differences in understanding without differences in explanation, I show that understanding does not reduce to explanation.

Type
Explanation
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 88 , Issue 5 , December 2021 , pp. 810 - 823
Copyright
Copyright 2021 by the Philosophy of Science Association. All rights reserved.

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

†

For comments, I thank Gordon Belot, Kareem Khalifa, Laura Ruetsche, and Elise Woodard. This research was supported by the National Science Foundation (grant DGE 1256260).

References

Abrahamsen, Adele, and Bechtel, William. 2015. “Diagrams as Tools for Scientific Reasoning.” Review of Philosophy and Psychology 6:117–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Barrett, Thomas. 2019. “Equivalent and Inequivalent Formulations of Classical Mechanics.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 70:1167–99.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterfield, Jeremy. 2006. “On Symmetry and Conserved Quantities in Classical Mechanics.” In Physical Theory and Its Interpretation, ed. Demopoulos, William and Pitowsky, Itamar, 43–99. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Craver, Carl. 2014. “The Ontic Account of Scientific Explanation.” In Explanation in the Special Sciences, ed. Kaiser, Marie I. et al., 27–52. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Curiel, Erik. 2014. “Classical Mechanics Is Lagrangian: It Is Not Hamiltonian.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 65:269–321.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Regt, Henk. 2009. “The Epistemic Value of Understanding.” Philosophy of Science 76:585–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Regt, Henk. 2017. Understanding Scientific Understanding. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Regt, Henk, and Dieks, Dennis. 2005. “A Contextual Approach to Scientific Understanding.” Synthese 144:137–70.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Geroch, Robert. 1972. “Einstein Algebras.” Communications in Mathematical Physics 26:271–75.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goldstein, Herbert, Poole, Charles P., and Safko, John L.. 2002. Classical Mechanics. San Francisco: Addison Wesley.Google Scholar
Grimm, Stephen. 2010. “The Goal of Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 41:337–44.Google Scholar
Grimm, Stephen. 2014. “Understanding as Knowledge of Causes.” In Virtue Epistemology Naturalized, ed. Fairweather, Abrol, 329–45. Cham: Springer.Google Scholar
Halvorson, Hans. 2016. “Scientific Theories.” In The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Science, ed. Humphreys, Paul, 585–608. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hills, Alison. 2016. “Understanding Why.” Noûs 50:661–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunt, Josh. Forthcoming. “Epistemic Dependence and Understanding: Reformulating through Symmetry.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science.Google Scholar
Khalifa, Kareem. 2012. “Inaugurating Understanding or Repackaging Explanation?” Philosophy of Science 79:15–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalifa, Kareem. 2013. “The Role of Explanation in Understanding.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 64:161–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalifa, Kareem. 2015. “EMU Defended.” European Journal for Philosophy of Science 5:377–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Khalifa, Kareem. 2017. Understanding, Explanation, and Scientific Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lancaster, Tom, and Blundell, Stephen. 2014. Quantum Field Theory for the Gifted Amateur. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipton, Peter. 2009. “Understanding without Explanation.” In Scientific Understanding, ed. Regt, Henk W. de, Leonelli, Sabina, and Eigner, Kai, 43–63. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Newman, Mark. 2013. “Refining the Inferential Model of Scientific Understanding.” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 27:173–97.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
North, Jill. 2009. “The ‘Structure’ of Physics.” Journal of Philosophy 106:57–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenstock, Sarita, Barrett, Thomas, and Weatherall, James. 2015. “On Einstein Algebras and Relativistic Spacetimes.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 52:309–16.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenstock, Sarita, and Weatherall, James. 2016. “A Categorical Equivalence between Generalized Holonomy Maps on a Connected Manifold and Principal Connections on Bundles over That Manifold.” Journal of Mathematical Physics 57 (10).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Salmon, Wesley. 1984/1998. “Scientific Explanation: Three Basic Conceptions.” In Causality and Explanation, 320–29. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Salmon, Wesley. 1998. “Scientific Explanation: Causation and Unification.” In Causality and Explanation, 68–78. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sider, Theodore. 2011. Writing the Book of the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Skow, Bradford. 2016. Reasons Why. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Srednicki, Mark. 2007. Quantum Field Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2008. Depth. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Strevens, Michael. 2013. “No Understanding without Explanation.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science A 44:510–15.Google Scholar
Weatherall, James. 2016. “Are Newtonian Gravitation and Geometrized Newtonian Gravitation Theoretically Equivalent?” Erkenntnis 81:1073–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weatherall, James. 2019. “Theoretical Equivalence in Physics.” Pts. 1 and 2. Philosophy Compass 14 (5).Google Scholar
Woodward, James. 2003. Making Things Happen. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar