Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xxiii

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2. Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics: In Praise of Conservative Induction

   • H. R. Post

   Pages 1-43

3. Correspondence and Reduction in Chemistry

   • Eric R. Scerri

   Pages 45-64

4. Taking Antecedent Conditions Seriously: A Lesson in Heuristics from Biology

   • Harmke Kamminga

   Pages 65-82

5. The Rise of the ‘Fifth Force’

   • Allan Franklin

   Pages 83-103

6. Michael Faraday’s Thought: Discovery or Revelation?

   • Elspeth Crawford

   Pages 105-124

7. Ideology, Heuristics and Rationality in the Context of Discovery

   • Noretta Koertge

   Pages 125-136

8. Towards an Acceptable Theory of Acceptance: Partial Structures Inconsistency and Correspondence

   • Newton C. A. Da Costa, Steven French

   Pages 137-158

9. Tales from the Classroom: The See-Saw

   • Avinash K. Puri

   Pages 159-169

10. The Unnatural Nature of the Laws of Nature: Symmetry and Asymmetry

    • Giora Hon

    Pages 171-187

11. Galilean Relativity and Galileo’s Relativity

    • Alan Chalmers

    Pages 189-205

12. Pragmatic Circles in Relativistic Time Keeping

    • Clive Kilmister, Barrie Tonkinson

    Pages 207-225

13. Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics in the Emergence of Special Relativity

    • Harvey R. Brown

    Pages 227-260

14. Underdetermination, Conventionalism and Realism: The Copenhagen vs. the Bohm Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics

    • James T. Cushing

    Pages 261-278

15. Measurement and Quantum Silence

    • Arthur Fine

    Pages 279-294

16. To What Physics Corresponds

    • Simon Saunders

    Pages 295-325

17. Is the End of Physics in Sight?

    • Michael Redhead

    Pages 327-341

18. Back Matter

    Pages 343-363

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This volume is presented in honour of Heinz Post, who founded a distinc­ tive and distinguished school of philosophy of science at Chelsea College, University of London. The 'Chelsea tradition' in philosophy of science takes the content of science seriously, as exemplified by the papers presented here. The unifying theme of this work is that of 'Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics', after the title of a classic and seminal paper by Heinz Post, published in 1971, which is reproduced in this volume with the kind permission of the editors and publishers of Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. Described by Paul Feyerabend in Against Method as "brilliant" and " . . . a partial antidote against the view which I try to defend" (1975, p. 61, fn. 17), this paper, peppered with illustrative examples from the history of science, brings to the fore some of Heinz Post's central concerns: the heuristic criteria used by scientists in constructing their theories, the intertheoretic relationships which these criteria reflect and, in particular, the nature of the correspondence that holds between a theory and its predecessors (and its suc­ cessors). The appearance of this volume more than twenty years later is an indica­ tion of the fruitfulness of Post's contribution: philosophers of science continue to explore the issues raised in his 1971 paper.

• Heinz Post
• Philosophy of Science
• heuristics
• ideology
• invariance
• philosophy
• quantum mechanics
• reduction
• science
• scientific discovery
• underdetermination

• Southeast Missouri State University, Missouri, USA

  Steven French

• University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

  Harmke Kamminga

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