Skip navigation

Lost password? | Help

Notes on Logic:

Informal, Deductive, and Inductive

Posts tagged with "composition"

The Thesis of Econophysics: Analogy and Division in Action

Saturday, 1. July 2006, 14:59:13

, ,

In recent years, there has been an attempt by a few physicists to reduce economics to the principles of physics. The effort has been dubbed "econophysics."

As Philip Ball reports in Nature:

The idea that physics might have something useful to contribute to economics arises because both fields are concerned with systems of many interacting components that obey specific rules. Statistical physics describes the behaviour of bulk-matter based on the forces acting between atoms and molecules. Economics studies the interactions between economic 'agents'--market traders, say, or businesses.

Arguably, deriving microeconomic principles from the behaviour of individual agents should pose similar problems to deriving thermodynamic laws from interatomic forces.

(Philip Ball, "Culture Crash," Nature 441 No. 7094 (8 June 2006), 686-687.)

Reducing or mapping economics to physics-based formulae may well be more than the extension of the mathematics of physics to the sphere of economics. The enterprise of econophysics illustrates a number of interesting pragmatic issues in scientific reasoning: (1) mathematics as the architecture of the sciences, (2) the theory of levels of phenomena as reflected in levels of organization, (3) the logical issues of composition and division, and (4) finally, the quest for the unity of science.

All reasoning seems to be ultimately analogical. The interesting question in this regard is whether there can be uniform classification of analogical methods.

No comments

Secundum quid

Thursday, 29. June 2006, 21:14:41

, , , ...

I was browsing through an old philosophy vocabulary book and reached the following entry:

Fallacy--Fallacia a Dicto Secundum quid ad Dictum Simpliciter, when a term is used, in one premiss, in a limited, and in the other in an unlimited sense; as, the Ethiopioan is white as to his teeth, therefore he is white.

(Charles P. Krauth, A Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences, (New York: Sheddon & Company, 1879), 192.)

Fifty years later, a popular logic book discussed the fallacy in this manner:

A dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid ... arguing from a general rule to a special case, without allowing for the special circumstances... A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter. This is the converse of the preceding type of fallacy, and consists in arguing from what holds good in special circumstances to a general rule in which those circumstances are ignored. For example, the fact that certain things (e.g., the destruction of enemy life and property, etc.) are allowed in the special circumstances of warfare, is no ground for allowing them in peace time.

(A. Wolf, Textbook of Logic (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1930), 361-362.)

Amazing! In the first quotation from Krauth, we have an instance of what is usually called the fallacy of Composition, and in the second quotation from Wolf, we have an instance of what is usually called hasty generalization.

Interestingly enough, Charles P. Krauth, in the 1879 volume, decscribes Wolf's A dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter as Fallacia Accidentis (Krauth, 191)!

The distinction between hasty generalization and Composition was outlined earlier in this blog under the topic of Generalities and Specificities in Inference. It seems to me I recall one or two current logic textbooks making a similar confusion.

It may well be that the Secundum quid fallacies historically conflated hasty generalization and Composition and conflated the fallacies of Accident and Division, also. Yet, A. Wolf in the second book quoted above lists Accident separately as belonging to the category of "Verbal Fallacies" and the Secundum quid's as "Non-Verbal Fallacies," which seems to me to be entirely correct only if Secundum quid is interpreted with respect to parts and wholes.

I'm also curious about textbooks in the sciences, especially biology, handle these reasoning processes. It seems to me almost every college biology textbook on the market gets the distinction between deduction and induction wrong. I would guess, as well, there might be some confusion between hasty generalization and Composition since both processes are fruitful sources of first hypotheses in the science of discovery.

No comments

« Prev 1 2 3 Next »

Showing posts 3 - 4 of 5.

July 2006
S M T W T F S
June 2006August 2006
1
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12 13 14 15
16 17 18 19 20 21 22
23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30 31

Philosophy Sources

  • The Bloomsbury Research Centre

    The Bloomsbury Research Centre is a free on-line database containing 17,000 cross-referenced entries linked and fully indexed. The Centre's search engine selects a wide range of subjects by title or by topic including areas of literature, art, myth,

  • The Ism Book

    Self-described as "an intellectual "field guide" that provides brief definitions of theories, doctrines, movements, and approaches in philosophy, religion, politics, science, the arts, and related disciplines. It was originally written in 1990 and wa

  • Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    Meta-Encyclopedia of Philosophy--a dynamic resource, by Andrew Chrucky, accessing the following sources: Dagobert D. Runes (ed.), Dictionary of Philosophy, 1942 , Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy , Dictiona

  • New York Times -- Philosophy

    The New York Times philosophy news with newletter or email alerts about academic philosophers and philosophy as well as societal applications of philosophy published in the Times over the last several years with links to additional articles on ethics

  • The Philosopher's Magazine

    The Philosopher's Magazine has a sampling of online articles with popular and introductory philosophical topics. Links to international newspaper articles with philosophical content are provided, but access to full content requires subscription. The

  • Philosophy Courses

    Tutorials in philosophy, logic, scientific reasoning, ethics, and Eastern philosophy. Online etexts in philosophy, aesthetics, and Eastern philosophy.

  • Social Science Information Gateway

    The World Philosophy Information Gateway is an extensive set of links rivaled only by EpistemeLinks.com, although the later site is somewhat better organized. The Internet resources include bibliography, books, journals, mailing lists, news, referenc

  • The Philosophy Pages

    The Philosophy Pages includes a dictionary of philosophical terms and names, a survey of the history of Western philosophy, a timeline for key figures, discussion of several major philosophers, a summary treatment of the elementary principles of logi

  • The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a continuously updated reference work and is a publishing project of the Metaphysics Research Lab at the Center for the Study of Language and Information (CSLI) at Stanford University. The General editor of

  • Wikipedia

    Wikipedia an online free encyclopedia for all subject, not just philosophy, is licensed under the Gnu Free Documentation License and contains a half-million articles maintained and edited by Wiki according to the philosophy of the free software movem

  • Dictionary of the History of Ideas

    Dictionary of the History of Ideas: Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas, edited by Philip P. Wiener, was published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, in 1973-74. Now out of print, the Dictionary is published online with the help of Scribner's and t

  • Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology

    Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology by James Mark Baldwin is a developing resource, first published in 1901, including terms from ethics, aesthetics, logic, philosophy of religion, mental pathology, anthropology, biology, neurology, physiology,

  • Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind

    Edited by Chris Eliasmith, the <b>Dictionary of Philosophy of Mind</b> is a free resource for the major concepts in the philosophy of mind. The dictionary has a policy of blind peer review for all submissions, and is sponsored by The Philosophy

  • EpistemeLinks.com

    EpistemeLinks.com is one of the oldest and most thorough sites on the Internet having comprehensive links for many different interests in philosophy including philosophers, philosophic subjects, reference works. blogs, philosophy discussion lists, et

  • Eserver.org

    This collection of e-texts contains philosophic classics and links to scholarly philosophic organizations. The English Server has other collections in addition, however, in critical theory, history, and in eighteenth century studies, which also addre

  • Free Online Dictionary of Philosophy

    OLDOP stands for the Free On Line Dictionary Of Philosophy, edited by the SWIF (Sito Web Italiano per la Filosofia). This resource contains about 2500 entries as of 01.01.05 contributed by qualified volunteers. The entire database is downloadable off

  • The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

    The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy (subtitled "A Field Guide to the Nomenclature of Philosophy") consists of regularly updated original articles by fifteen editors, one hundred academic specialists, and technical advisors. The articles are autho

  • The Internet Philosopher

    The Internet Philosopher is a tutorial on the use of the Internet for studying philosophy. The tutorial covers the prominent Internet sites, how to search, what to trust, and how to maximize information skills. Other features include printer friendly