Heidelberg 2022 – wissenschaftliches Programm

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 7: Symmetries and Principles

AGPhil 7.2: Vortrag

Mittwoch, 23. März 2022, 17:00–17:30, AGPhil-H14

Cassirer and Weyl on the Constitutive Structure of Physical Theory — •Noah Stemeroff — University of Bonn

Though representative of divergent philosophical and intellectual traditions, both Ernst Cassirer and Hermann Weyl held that a given mathematical framework must always serve as a necessary presupposition of scientific thought (within a broadly Kantian position). Neither thought that this framework was fixed, a priori, as it was for Kant. However, in allowing for the revision of the constitutive framework of scientific thought, both were forced to face the spectre of a pervasive relativism. In response, each suggested that the relativist abolition of the standard of objectivity does not entail the abolition of the difference in value and performance of various scientific theories. On this view, scientific theories do not stand apart in their relation to the world, to be judged solely on their own merits, but rather as part of a progressive series. In this context, Cassirer and Weyl both highlighted the fundamental role that group theory played as a constitutive feature of our understanding of objectivity through the progress of science. In this paper, I will examine the differing views of Cassirer and Weyl concerning the constitutive role of group theory in physical enquiry, and what lessons we can draw from this history concerning modern debates on the methodology of physics.