Jul 4, 2018 06:16 PM
(This post was last modified: Jul 4, 2018 06:20 PM by C C.)
https://www.thur.de/philo/project/cartwright.htm
EXCERPT: . . . According to Cartwright science can’t directly understand the order of the world. The "dappled" world shows an interacting change of many causal relations; its relation to order and laws is not immediately. We need an arrangement which filters or produces that order we know as laws. This arrangement is called "nomological machine" by Cartwright. The nomological machine is "a fixed (enough) arrangement of components, or factors, with stable (enough) capacities that in the right sort of stable (enough) environment will, with repeated operation, give rise to the kind of regular behaviour that we represent in our scientific laws" (Cartwright 1998a:2). Such a nomological machine exists in nature very seldom. The solar system is such a machine. Otherwise we have to built such a machine in our scientific work. To a nomological machine belongs the concrete material devices and the ideal models and concepts..
EXCERPT: . . . According to Cartwright science can’t directly understand the order of the world. The "dappled" world shows an interacting change of many causal relations; its relation to order and laws is not immediately. We need an arrangement which filters or produces that order we know as laws. This arrangement is called "nomological machine" by Cartwright. The nomological machine is "a fixed (enough) arrangement of components, or factors, with stable (enough) capacities that in the right sort of stable (enough) environment will, with repeated operation, give rise to the kind of regular behaviour that we represent in our scientific laws" (Cartwright 1998a:2). Such a nomological machine exists in nature very seldom. The solar system is such a machine. Otherwise we have to built such a machine in our scientific work. To a nomological machine belongs the concrete material devices and the ideal models and concepts..
None of our concepts are given. We create them, and their creation is a human social enterprise with a vast number of different kinds of influences. (Cartwright 1998b: 91)
The nomological machine is a philosophical concept (Cartwright 1998a: 10), a "a way of categorizing and understanding what happens in the world". In this sense Cartwright alters empirism: There are presuppositions, which can’t be tested within the frame of the theory itself.For the testing of causal claims at any level [...] necessarily presupposes some metaphysical assumptions that cannot be tested by the same stringent logic. (Cartwright 1989/1994:180)
MORE: https://www.thur.de/philo/project/cartwright.htm