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Models: The Blueprints for Laws

Cartwright, N.

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Abstract

In this paper the claim that laws of nature are to be understood as claims about what necessarily or reliably happens is disputed. Laws can characterize what happens in a reliable way, but they do not do this easily. We do not have laws for everything occurring in the world, but only for those situations where what happens in nature is represented by a model: models are blueprints for nomological machines, which in turn give rise to laws. An example from economics shows, in particular, how we use--and how we need to use--models to get probabilistic laws.

Citation

Cartwright, N. (1997). Models: The Blueprints for Laws. Philosophy of Science, 64, S292-S303. https://doi.org/10.1086/392608

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Dec 1, 1997
Deposit Date Sep 24, 2015
Publicly Available Date Jul 27, 2016
Journal Philosophy of Science
Print ISSN 0031-8248
Electronic ISSN 1539-767X
Publisher Philosophy of Science Association
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 64
Pages S292-S303
DOI https://doi.org/10.1086/392608
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1402163

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