IDEALIZATION AS PRESCRIPTIONS AND THE ROLE OF FICTION IN SCIENCE: TOWARDS A FORMAL SEMANTICS - HAL-SHS - Sciences de l'Homme et de la Société Accéder directement au contenu
Chapitre D'ouvrage Année : 2017

IDEALIZATION AS PRESCRIPTIONS AND THE ROLE OF FICTION IN SCIENCE: TOWARDS A FORMAL SEMANTICS

Shahid Rahman

Résumé

Preliminary words One important feature of Poincaré's conventionalism of geometry is linked to the relation between the abstract notion of space geometry and the representations of the free mobility of our bodies. In this sense «the group of rigid motions» identified by Helmholtz and Lie as the foundation of geometries of constant curvature is, according to Poincaré, an idealization of the primitive experience that acquaints us with the properties of space in the first place. 2 Furthermore, since Poincaré thinks that the only adequate candidates for physical geometry – the geometries of constant curvature – are equivalent from a mathematical point of view (they are homeomorphic), we can choose any one of these. Actually, according to Poincaré, the idealization involved in passing from our own local motions to the group of motions makes use of temporal intuition: our notion of the large-space structure of space assumes that our displacements are infinitely iterables and this assumes temporal intuition. 3 Thus, it looks as Poincaré's notion of convention assumes some kind of idealization process. Indeed, the notion of convention involved in this cases seems to assume that in relation to a target system the choice between two idealizations is determined by some kind of equivalence relation, which in our case is displayed 1
Fichier principal
Vignette du fichier
SCIENTIificModelPrescriptions.pdf (202.82 Ko) Télécharger le fichier
Origine : Accord explicite pour ce dépôt
Loading...

Dates et versions

halshs-01465265 , version 1 (11-02-2017)

Identifiants

  • HAL Id : halshs-01465265 , version 1

Citer

Shahid Rahman. IDEALIZATION AS PRESCRIPTIONS AND THE ROLE OF FICTION IN SCIENCE: TOWARDS A FORMAL SEMANTICS. Olga Pombo. Modelos é Lugares, pp.171 - 171, 2017, 978-972-754-287-1. ⟨halshs-01465265⟩
120 Consultations
118 Téléchargements

Partager

Gmail Facebook X LinkedIn More