Placeholder text

Go to cart

Nature of Contingency

By Alastair Wilson

Nature of Contingency

By Alastair Wilson

0 - Default Title
Description
This book defends a radical new theory of contingency as a physical phenomenon. Drawing on the many-worlds approach to quantum theory and cutting-edge metaphysics and philosophy of science, it argues that quantum theories are best understood as telling us about the space of genuine possibilities, rather than as telling us solely about actuality. When quantum physics is taken seriously in the way first proposed by Hugh Everett III, it provides the resources for a new systematic metaphysical framework encompassing possibility, necessity, actuality, chance, counterfactuals, and a host of related modal notions. Rationalist metaphysicians argue that the metaphysics of modality is strictly prior to any scientific investigation; metaphysics establishes which worlds are possible, and physics merely checks which of these worlds is actual. Naturalistic metaphysicians respond that science may discover new possibilities and new impossibilities. This book's quantum theory of contingency takes naturalistic metaphysics one step further, allowing that science may discover what it is to be possible. As electromagnetism revealed the nature of light, as acoustics revealed the nature of sound, as statistical mechanics revealed the nature of heat, so quantum physics reveals the nature of contingency.
Product details
Number of Pages:
232
Release Date:
2020-03-11
Publication Date:
2020-03-11
Publisher:
OXFORD UNIV PR
Languages:
Original: English
ISBN10:
0198846215
ISBN13:
9780198846215
GPSR Manufacturer Reference:
[email protected]
Weight:
429 g
Height:
145 cm
Width:
222 cm
Thickness:
16 cm
Buy on Amazon
Currently sold out