Berlin 2018 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 3: Philosophie der Physik III

AGPhil 3.4: Talk

Thursday, March 15, 2018, 14:15–14:45, H 2033

More Talk About Toy Models — •Joshua Luczak — Leibniz Universität Hannover, Hannover, Germany

Scientists frequently use toy models to reason about physical theories and actual systems. This may seem strange because toy models do not perform a representational function. That is, they do not represent actual systems or collections of systems. In fact, they do not represent anything. Despite their frequent and important use in scientific reasoning, discussions of toy models are scarcely found in the philosophical literature on scientific modelling. This paper intends to elevate the status of these models by highlighting and justifying some of the ways they are used to reason about actual systems and physical theories. This will be achieved by highlighting and justifying some of the ways Paul and Tatyana Ehrenfests' urn (dog-flea) model---a model originally introduced so as to reason about the kinetic theory of gases and Ludwig Boltzmann's original attempts to account for irreversible thermal phenomena and the Second Law of Thermodynamics---is used within statistical mechanics.