How the Laws of Physics Lie¶
Cartwright, N. (1983). How the Laws of Physics Lie. Oxford University Press.
Cited by¶
2 citations across 2 artifacts.
Each citation links to the sentence it supports in the citing article.
Primes¶
- Fallacy Of Misplaced Concreteness
- Physics and engineering — idealized objects (point masses, frictionless planes, Carnot cycles) treated as the real systems being designed, then puzzling at the mismatch.
This sourceArgues fundamental physical laws describe highly idealized objects in models rather than real systems — the philosophy-of-science treatment of idealized objects (point masses, frictionless planes) mistaken for the systems they approximate.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Cartwright's own abstract states that fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models rather than reality, which backs the idealized-object half of the claim but not the engineering-mismatch framing or the named examples.
“Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models.”
- Physics and engineering — idealized objects (point masses, frictionless planes, Carnot cycles) treated as the real systems being designed, then puzzling at the mismatch.
- Zero-Force Null Baseline
- Yes — the ideal-gas law is false, Hardy-Weinberg is false, perfect competition is false, Modigliani-Miller is false.
This sourceArgues that fundamental scientific laws are literally false idealizations whose value lies in modeling deviations via named corrections — the philosophical account of the deliberately-false-baseline move.
Supported in partVerified against the publisher's abstract
Cartwright's abstract backs only the general thesis that fundamental laws describe idealized models rather than reality; it names none of the four laws the claim calls false.
“despite their great explanatory power these laws do not describe reality. Instead, fundamental laws describe highly idealized objects in models.”
- Yes — the ideal-gas law is false, Hardy-Weinberg is false, perfect competition is false, Modigliani-Miller is false.
Verification¶
Does it exist? Confirmed. This work's DOI resolves to a registered record, which fixes its identity. That is all it fixes.
Does it back the claim? Read against the text for 2 of 2 citations: 2 supported in part. Each verdict is shown under its citation below, with what in the work backs the sentence.
Support is checked per citation rather than per work — the same source can be cited soundly in one article and wrongly in another. Per-citation recording began recently, so a citation with no recorded check is a gap in the record rather than evidence it went unchecked.
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Registry ID ref:65ea922d2ce9 · see in the full table