Principal Researcher: Olimpia I. Lombardi
Ressearchers: Sebastian E. Fortin, Claudia Vanney, Juan Camilo González, Martín G. Labarca, María José Ferreira, Cristina A. López, Hernán L. Accorinti, Jesús A. Jaimes Arriaga.
Project Duration: 2019-2021
Amount Awarded: $180,000
The project is framed within the scope of the links between the general philosophy of science and the philosophies of particular sciences. From the general philosophy of science we will take the theoretical frameworks of reductionism and ontological pluralism, and compare its adequacy to specific cases belonging to the field of philosophies of particular sciences, in our case, physical and chemical.
The general objectives are to analyze certain philosophical problems that arise both in the fields of physics and chemistry, as well as in the field of inter-theoretical relations within each of these disciplines and interdisciplinary relations between them. In this way the work plan is organized around 2 themes:
Relations between quantum mechanics and classical mechanics: the general objective is to clarify the conceptual aspects of the Modal-Hamiltonian interpretation, in particular, by developing the type of classical limit that derives from it. On the other hand, the conceptual unification of the interpretation will be approached with our previous approach of the classical limit based on the use of non-unit evolutions in open and closed systems. For this, a logical characterization of the classical limit will be carried out from a formal-mathematical point of view. And such formalism will be applied to the description of specific phenomena such as the Loschmidt echo.
Relations between quantum chemistry and mechanics: Based on previous work on the subject, progress will be made in the study and analysis of the ontology of quantum chemistry. In particular, it is intended to analyze in detail the way in which quantum chemistry models integrate conceptual and qualitative assumptions from different theories, sometimes incompatible. This will address the study of the problem of 3N dimensions in molecular chemistry. In turn, we will extend our study to solid state substances and analyze the ontological status of phonons.
