Nature's Capacities and Their Measurements

出版者:Oxford University Press, USA

作者:Nancy Cartwright

页数:280

出版时间:1994-5-19

价格:USD 50.00

装帧:Paperback

isbn号码:9780198235071

图书标签:科学哲学科学哲学-自然定律科学&哲学哲学NancyCartwrightCausality

This book argues for the place of capacities within an grounds of meaning, not method. Yet it is questions of method that should concern the modern empiricist: can capacities be measured? Cartwright argues that they are measured if anything is. Stanford University's Gravity-Probe-B will measure capacities in a cryogenic dewar deep in space. More mundanely, we use probabilities to measure capacities, and the assumptions required to ensure that probabilities are a reliable instrument are investigated in the opening chapters of this book, where the early methods of econometrics set a model. The last chapter applies lessons about probabilities and capacities to quantum mechanics and the Bell inequalities. The central thesis throughout is that capacities not only can be admitted by empiricists, but indeed must be - otherwise the empirical methods of modern science will make no sense.