Abstract
An interpretation of the formalism of quantum mechanics that can be regarded as uncontroversial is currently not available. Consequently, philosophers have often contrasted the poor explanatory power of quantum theory to its unparalleled predictive capacity. However, the admission that our best theory of the fundamental constituents of matter cannot explain the phenomena it describes represent a strong argument against the view that explanation is a legitimate aim of science, and this conclusion is regarded by the vast majority of philosophers as unacceptable.
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Notes
- 1.
Clifton appropriates this definition, with some modifications, from Hughes’ (1993) definition of theoretical explanation.
- 2.
The inequality derived by Heisenberg was not exactly the one given in (9.1). Heisenberg originally derived the formula:
$$ \Delta x \bullet \Delta p \ge \frac {\hbar} {2} $$(9.2)The standard formulation was for first proved by Kennard, in 1927.
- 3.
For a more detailed reconstruction of Heisenberg’s relations, see Uffink (1990, p. 96).
- 4.
For some of these problems, we refer the reader to the work already cited in Note 3.
- 5.
- 6.
A categorial framework is the set of fundamental metaphysical assumptions about what sorts of entities and processes lie within a theory’s domain (see Hughes 1989b, pp. 175–176).
- 7.
This objection is due to Jim Brown, and was addressed to one of us during a presentation of a previous version of this paper at the first European Philosophy of Science Association (EPSA) conference, held in Madrid in 2007.
- 8.
As we will see in more details in the next section, this also marks the difference between structural explanations and the D-N model of explanation.
- 9.
For instance, according to the Bohmian interpretation, non-locality has a causal reading, corres-ponding to action at a distance.
- 10.
A possible exception is Everettian interpretations, where non-locality could be doubted in virtue of the fact that all outcomes are simultaneously realized. However, relative to a single branch or world, there must be a non-local correlation.
- 11.
If one adds the physical law and the initial conditions mentioned in (iii).
- 12.
For a full justification of this claim, we refer the reader to Dorato (2011).
- 13.
See Baez (2006, pp. 259).
- 14.
As a fact of sociology, it could be guessed that while the philosophically educated person tends to prefer the most unifying algebraic approach as the most explanatory, this attitude is far from being typical among physicists, who, in explaining the momentum/position Uncertainty Relation, more often than not rely on the less-general analytic explanation.
- 15.
In this paper, we have not further studied these possibilities.
- 16.
This latter conception is committed to regarding mass, charge and spin as extrinsic rather than intrinsic properties of particles, a claim that, on the face of it, looks quite implausible. (For a revised version of their view, see Chapter 8.)
- 17.
- 18.
Entity realism commits us to the existence of entities endowed with intrinsic properties, while theory realism commits us to the (approximate) truth of empirically successful laws or theories.
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Dorato, M., Felline, L. (2010). Scientific Explanation and Scientific Structuralism. In: Bokulich, A., Bokulich, P. (eds) Scientific Structuralism. Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science, vol 281. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-9597-8_9
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