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Peircean View on Einstein's Dualism

Publication at Faculty of Humanities |
2022

Abstract

Scientific practice is concerned with representations whose purpose should be to attain as much breadth and depth of information about the character of its objects as possible. The development of scientific theories should be marked by one principal goal: to be, amongst all other comparable representations, the closest to the truth, which is, according to Peirce "agreement with conclusion logically inferable from the sum of all information" (1868a, W 2: 162-163).

But for Einstein, objective reality (i.e., the supposed "true" character of objects) is "independent of any theory" (Einstein et. al. 1935: 777), and concepts with which the theory operates do not inform our notion of it. This asserts irreducible binarity of theory and reality.

In this presentation I use Peirce's account of scientific method and representability to deny Einstein's naïve notion of objective reality, in favor of a Peircean notion of reality based on the doctrine of tychism.