[FOM] R: A compedium... Axiomatics of physical theories

Antonino Drago drago at unina.it
Tue Dec 20 19:13:17 EST 2005


J.F. Costa wrote:
I woke up this morning with the idea that something was missing in this
discussion about the «compendium of examples of the "power" of deductive
logic?», namely discussions by Nagel or Bunge, e.g., in Philosophy of
Physics (Mario Bunge), D. Reidel.

Actually, this axiomatic attitude is presently out to date, and so Hilbert's
dream of axiomatising physical theories, since it is not possible to give
axioms which relate reality with the axiomatics' notions. Owing to this
problem at present a strong group Stegmuller, Balzer, Moulines etc,)
follows Suppes' attitude to "axiomatise" by giving a predicate which just
relates reality to some mathematical construct  (belonging to set theory).
Structuralists cumulated an interesting interpretation of physical theories,
albeit too much a formal one for my feelings, however without any more
ambitious project of axiomatising in a classical sense.
Greetings
Antonino Drago
via Benvenuti 5
Castelmaggiore Calci Pisa 56010
tel. 050 937493
fax 06 233242218





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