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Philosophia Mathematica Advance Access originally published online on August 8, 2007
Philosophia Mathematica 2008 16(2):227-243; doi:10.1093/philmat/nkm025
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Copyright © The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press.

The Explanatory Power of Phase Spaces{dagger}

Aidan Lyon* and Mark Colyvan**

* Philosophy Program, RSSS, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT, 0200, Australia.
** Department of Philosophy, University of Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.

Correspondence: aidan{at}coombs.anu.edu.au

Correspondence: mcolyvan{at}usyd.edu.au

David Malament argued that Hartry Field's nominalisation program is unlikely to be able to deal with non-space-time theories such as phase-space theories. We give a specific example of such a phase-space theory and argue that this presentation of the theory delivers explanations that are not available in the classical presentation of the theory. This suggests that even if phase-space theories can be nominalised, the resulting theory will not have the explanatory power of the original. Phase-space theories thus raise problems for nominalists that go beyond Malament's initial concerns.

{dagger} Thanks to Mark Steiner, Jens Christian Bjerring, Ben Fraser, John Mathewson, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.


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Extending Hartry Field's Instrumental Account of Applied Mathematics to Statistical Mechanics
Philosophia Mathematica, October 1, 2008; (2008) nkn026v1.
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