Unifying Scientific Theories
Physical Concepts and Mathematical Structures

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory.

Margaret Morrison (Author)

9780521652162, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 28 January 2000

282 pages, 9 b/w illus.
23.5 x 16.1 x 2.4 cm, 0.535 kg

"a sustained, informative, and thought-provoking"

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory. The process has characterized much of the history of science and is prominent in contemporary physics; the search for a 'theory of everything' involves the same attempt at unification. Margaret Morrison argues that, contrary to popular philosophical views, unification and explanation often have little to do with each other. The mechanisms that facilitate unification are not those that enable us to explain how or why phenomena behave as they do. A feature of this book is an account of many case studies of theory unification in nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics and of how evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics were unified into what we now term evolutionary genetics.

Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. The many faces of unity
2. Unification, realism and inference
3. Maxwell's unification of electromagnetism and optics
4. Gauges, symmetries and forces: the electroweak unification
5. Special relativity and the unity of physics
6. Darwin and natural selection: unification versus explanation
7. Structural unity and the biological synthesis
Conclusions
Notes
References
Index.

Subject Areas: History of science [PDX], Philosophy of science [PDA], Mathematics & science [P], History of ideas [JFCX]