Organon F
Volume 30, May 2023, Issue 2, Pages 165–170
ISSN 2585-7150 (online) ISSN 1335-0668 (print)
Discussion Note | Special issue on Author Meets Critics Symposium: Discussion on The Relevance of Models
Nowak, Models, and the Lessons of Neo-Kantianism
Stephen Turner
https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30208
Models are the coin of the realm in current philosophy of science, as they are in science itself, having replaced laws and theories as the primary strategy. Logical Positivism tried to erase the older neo-Kantian distinction between ideal constructions and reality. It returns in the case of models. Nowak’s concept of idealization provided an alternative account of this issue. It construed model application as concretizations of hypotheses which improve by accounting for exceptions. This appears to account for physical law. But it raises the problem of uniqueness: is the result unique, as physical law should be? Neo-Kantianism failed this test. Its solutions were circular justifications for claims of uniqueness. Nowak inherited the problem without resolving it.
Ideal-types; idealization; Leszek Nowak; models; neo-Kantianism; Poznań School of Methodology; underdetermination.
Author
Stephen Turner
Affiliation
University of South Florida
Address
Department of Philosophy, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Ave, Tampa, FL 33620, United States
Received
12 December 2021
Accepted
10 January 2022
Publishers
Institute of Philosophy of the Slovak Academy of Sciences
Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
APA
Turner, S. (2023). Nowak, Models, and the Lessons of Neo-Kantianism. Organon F, 30(2), 165–170. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30208
Chicago
Turner, Stephen. 2023. "Nowak, Models, and the Lessons of Neo-Kantianism." Organon F 30 (2): 165–170. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30208
Harvard
Turner, S. (2023). Nowak, Models, and the Lessons of Neo-Kantianism. Organon F, 30(2), pp. 165–170. https://doi.org/10.31577/orgf.2023.30208
© Stephen Turner
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