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.
- 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.
- Yes — the ideal-gas law is false, Hardy-Weinberg is false, perfect competition is false, Modigliani-Miller is false.
Verification¶
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