Explaining Laws in Special Relativity :: Science Mathematics Papers

Explaining Laws in particular(prenominal) theory of relativityWesley Salmon has suggested that the both jumper lead situations of scientific explanation, the bottom-up view and the top-down view, describe distinct types of explanation. In this paper, I focus on theoretical explanations in physics, i.e., explanations of physical laws. Using explanations of E=mc2, I implore that the distinction between bottom-up explanations (BUEs) and top-down explanations (BUEs) is outdo understood as a manifestation of a deeper distinction, found origin solelyy in nitrogens work, between two levels of theory. I use Einsteins distinction between principle and constructive theories to argue that only demoralise level theories, i.e., constructive theories, can yield BUEs. These explanations, furthermore, depend on high level laws that receive only TDEs from a principle theory. Thus, I reason out that Salmons challenge to characterize the kindred between the two types of explanation can be met only by recognizing the close relationship between types of theoretical explanation and the structure of physical theory. The two leading views of scientific explanation, Salmons bottom-up view and the Friedman-Kitcher top-down view, lapse what appear to be prima facie incompatible characterizations of scientific explanation. According to the bottom-up view, we explain a given phenomenon when we uncover the underlying causal mechanisms that argon responsible for its occurrence. The top-down view, on the other hand, maintains that we explain a phenomenon by deriving it from the general principles or laws that best unify our knowledge. In this paper, I focus on theoretical explanations in physics, i.e., explanations of physical laws. I commencement show that, as Salmon suggests (1989, p. 180-182), it seems promising to treat these two approaches non so much as different views about explanation only rather as descriptions of two distinct types of scientific explanations there are clear cases of laws that have bottom-up explanations (BUEs) while others receive only top-down explanations (TDEs). I then argue, using explanations of mass-energy equivalence in Special Relativity (SR), that this disparity (why should some laws receive only TDEs after all?) is best understood as a symptom of a deeper distinction, first introduced by Newton, between two levels of physical theory. At one level, there is the hookup of general principles and definitions of physical terms, i.e., a theoretical framework, from which one derives general constraints for all physical processes. At a lower level, there are laws that bring out and describe specific physical interactions like gravitation and electromagnetism.