Books in the Elements in the Philosophy of Physics series

More than 100 years after quantum mechanics was introduced, the interpretation of the theory remains controversial. This Element introduces some of the most puzzling questions at the foundations of quantum mechanics and surveys the most prominent ways in which physicists and philosophers of physics have attempted to resolve them.

This Element introduces major issues in the epistemology of experimental physics through discussion of canonical physics experiments and some that have not yet received much philosophical attention.

This Element explores what it means for two theories in physics to be equivalent (or inequivalent), and what lessons can be drawn about their structure as a result. It does so through a twofold approach.

This Element offers an overview of some of the most important debates in philosophy and physics around the topics of emergence and reduction and proposes a compatibilist view of emergence and reduction. In particular, it suggests that specific notions of emergence, which the author calls 'few-many emergence' and 'coarse-grained emergence', are compatible with 'intertheoretic reduction'. Some further issues that will be addressed concern the comparison between parts-whole emergence and few-many emergence, the emergence of effective (-field) theories, the use of infinite limits, the notion of intertheoretic reduction and the explanation of universal and cooperative behavior. Although the focus will be principally on classical phase transitions and other examples from condensed matter physics, the main aim is to draw some general conclusions on the topics of emergence and reduction that can help us understand a variety of case-studies ranging from high-energy physics to astrophysics.