Original scientific paper
A Law-Constitutive Explanation of Fundamental Material Objects and “Bodies that Surround Us”
Mladen Domazet
orcid.org/0000-0002-9870-9485
; Institute for Social Research, Zagreb, Croatia
Abstract
What becomes of our clearest theories of explanation, when faced with the unpalatable quantum phenomena that seem to undermine the direct conceptual connection between the fundamental material entities and the self-standing material objects of everyday parlance? The general explanatory theory advocates unification of explanatory concepts with everyday discourse, identification of essentially similar characteristics between direct experience and the hypothesised explanatory ontology, and a conceptualisation of phenomena in terms of objects enduring causally regulated change. On the other hand quantum theory feeds antirealist suspicions about the worth of (metaphysical) realist explanatory endeavour with examples of phenomena in which the structure of material separation and individuation based on spatial extension is insufficient for construction of deeper explanatory narratives. An example from history of science, that of Newton’s law-constitutive definition of objects in response to D escartes problem of bodies is used to suggest a possible strategy for explanations unifying the quantum and common-sense conceptual domains, provided the anti-realist challenge to such enterprise is read as questioning the epistemological justification of interpretation of experience in both cases.
Keywords
Conceptual framework; explanation; material objects, natural laws; quantum theory; realism
Hrčak ID:
68315
URI
Publication date:
30.5.2011.
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