The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries

In this book Nancy Cartwright argues against a vision of a uniform world completely ordered under a single elegant theory, and proposes instead a patchwork of laws of nature. Combining classic and newly written essays, The Dappled World offers important methodological lessons for both the natural and the social sciences, and will interest anyone who wants to understand how modern science works.

Acknowledgements

ix

Introduction

1

(20)

Part I Where do laws of nature come from?

21

(54)

Fundamentalism versus the patchwork of laws

23

(12)

Fables and models

35

(34)

Nomological machines and the laws they produce

69

(6)

Part II Laws and their limits

75

(102)

The laws we test in physics

Aristotelian natures and the modern experimental method

77

(27)

Causal laws

Causal diversity; causal stability

104

(33)

Current economic theory

Ceteris paribus laws and socio-economic machines

137

(15)

Probabilistic laws

Probability machines: chance set-ups and economic models

152

(25)

Part III The boundaries of quantum and classical physics and the territories they share

177

(57)

How bridge principles set the domain of quantum theory

179

(32)

How quantum and classical theories relate

211

(23)

Bibliography

234

(8)

Index

242

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The Dappled World: A Study of the Boundaries of Science

Summary

Table of Contents

Supplemental Materials