The paradox of phase transitions
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Date
2021
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Abstract
In this thesis I present a novel solution to the paradox of phase transition, a
problem that has gained extensive attention from philosophers of physics over
the last twenty years. The paradox consists in the contrast between a theoretical
consequence of statistical mechanics which asserts that phase transitions require
infinite amounts of substance and disproving observations of phase transitions
in finite systems. The fact that it is widely neglected by physicists considerably
challenges the philosophical idea of the rationality of that science. Besides these
philosophical worries about the apparent contradiction, the study of phase transitions
illuminates a wide range of hotly debated topics from the philosophy of
science, like asymptotic reasoning as a new kind of scientific explanation, the
problem of indispensable counterfactual idealisations, as well as limitations of
reductionism and potential emergent phenomena in physics. Unlike many other
philosophers, I do not choose a revisionist approach that rectifies the theoretical
approach to phase transitions in physics from a philosophical perspective,
I rather argue that the paradox is the result of the underlying conception of
scientific representation. In order to dissolve the paradox, I propose an alternative
account of how theoretical models represent empirical objects that reflects
the inherent imprecise nature of theories of empirical sciences. It successfully
resolves the tension between the theoretically required infinite models and the
finiteness of empirical objects, as it admits that the former represent the latter.
Altogether, my thesis is evidence of the utility of the methods of general philosophy
of science for the philosophy of the particular sciences. It is the first
concrete application of the structuralism of theories that emphasises the importance
of accounting for the imprecise nature of physical theories and shows how
its central formal tool of admissible blurs successfully solves a pending problem
from the philosophy of physics.
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Keywords
reduction, paradox of phase transitions, structuralism of physical theories