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Universality Reduced

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Alexander Franklin
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Abstract

The universality of critical phenomena is best explained by appeal to the Renormalization Group (RG). Batterman and Morrison, among others, have claimed that this explanation is irreducible. I argue that the RG account is reducible but that the higher-level explanation ought not to be eliminated. I demonstrate that the key assumption on which the explanation relies—the scale invariance of critical systems—can be explained in lower-level terms. However, we should not replace the RG explanation with a bottom-up account; rather, we should acknowledge that the explanation appeals to dependencies that may be traced down to lower levels.

Type
Physical Sciences
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 86 , Issue 5 , December 2019 , pp. 1295 - 1306
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

I am grateful to Eleanor Knox, to two anonymous referees, and to the audiences of the IMPS 2018 and PSA 2018 conferences for helpful comments. This work as supported by the London Arts and Humanities Partnership.

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