New publications
Anna Michalska
34th round
Sebastian Fortin, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Matias Pasqualini, Instituto de Investigaciones “Dr. Adolfo Prieto”, Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Rosario, Argentina
Emergence-free duality: Phonons and vibrating atoms in crystalline solids, Foundations of Physics, 55, article number 24, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10701-025-00834-5
ABSTRACT
The crystalline solids admit two models: the one of vibrating atoms and the one
of phonons. The model of phonons allows explaining certain properties of
crystalline solids that the model of vibrating atoms does not allow. Usually,
the model of phonons is assigned a diminished ontological status as
quasi-particles. Recently, there has been a proposal to homologate the
ontological status of phonons with that of emergent particles, such as photons.
In this article, this proposal will be critically examined, and it will be
proposed that the model of phonons and the model of vibrating atoms could be
considered in ontological parity.
Anna Alexandrova, Cambridge University
The inexact and separate science of economics: by D. M. Hausman, Cambridge University Press, 2023, 2nd edition Cambridge, UK, $44.99 (paperback), ISBN: 9781009320276, Length: 450 pages, Journal of Economic Methodology, 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1080/1350178X.2025.2499379
Anna Alexandrova
Social science: A constructivist account, forthcoming in Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume, 2025. https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.115918
ABSTRACT
What sort of inquiry is social science? This question used to preoccupy philosophers but fell off their agenda due to a stalemate between so-called naturalists, who took the ideal to be natural science, and exceptionalists, who allied social sciences with humanities. I show that both positions commit the error of contrastivism, namely defining social science in contrast to these two traditions, which inevitably ends up caricaturing and essentialising them. Using recent advances in social epistemology and political theory, I formulate constructivism about social sciences, a view that denies an essence to this inquiry and grounds it in the needs of communities to understand and improve themselves.
Dimitrios Panayotopoulos-Tsiros,
Owen Garling,
Rosa Marks,
Anna Alexandrova,
Diane Coyle,
Michael Kenny
Measuring social and cultural Infrastructure, The British Academy: London, 2025 (report). doi.org/10.5871/infrastructure/measuring
Anguel Stefanov, Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences
Changing views of space, time, and the universe, Lambert Academic Publishing, 2025.
ABSTRACT
The book explores how and why contemporary scientific knowledge undergoes conceptual shifts in its understanding of space, time, and the Universe. It argues for the substantive nature of spacetime and presents gravitational interaction not as a force field - unlike electromagnetic, weak, and strong interactions. The narrative revisits Einstein's so-called "biggest blunder" in light of his philosophical realism. It also examines how philosophical and aesthetical preferences influence modern cosmological theories. Finally, the book offers a critical analysis of the three main versions of the Anthropic Principle.
Anna Michalska
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AnnaEnvironmental homogeneity, selective paths, and the individuation of selection processes, Erkenntnis, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-025-00989-7
ABSTRACT
In his influential book Adaptation and Environment, Robert Brandon defended a fitness-centered definition of natural selection according to which selection requires differences in fitness (i.e. differences in the ability to survive and reproduce of the biological entities of a population) and argued that natural selection requires homogeneous selective environments. This paper shows that, when taken in conjunction with his fitness-centered definition of selection, Brandon’s idea that selection requires homogeneous selective environments entails a stronger thesis according to which selection processes are individuated by homogeneous selective environments. I then show that the latter idea is problematic and that the reasons for rejecting it are provided by the main argument against fitness-centered definitions of selection. More specifically, the way evolutionary biologists handle cases of antagonistic selection encourages us not only to embrace an alternative, trait-centered definition of selection – according to which natural selection is the contributing causing of differences in actual reproductive success by differences in a trait –, but to also embrace the idea that selection processes are not individuated by homogeneous selective environments, but by “selective paths,” i.e. by the causal paths between differences in a trait and differences in reproductive success. I finally argue that natural-selectionist explanations need not appeal to selection processes that are fully individuated, i.e. the full individuation of selection processes is not a requirement for the explanations of evolutionary outcomes put forth by biologists.