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“Chaos and Fundamentalism.” Philosophy of Science 67 (2000) S454-S465.
(published version) [preprint]
Abstract. According to fundamentalism: if we had a most fundamental theory, we would have the deepest possible understanding of the physical world, and our less fundamental theories would be, in some sense, dispensable. Some arguments against fundamentalism rely on the observation that there are phenomena treated by our less fundamental theories which we don’t know how to model using the resources of our more fundamental theories. But the ensuing debate quickly reduces to a clash of intuitions. Here I focus instead on situations involving chaotic systems in which we have both a more fundamental (quantum) and a less fundamental (classical) treatment of a given phenomenon. Then it will seem that the fundamentalist is bound to be vindicated: the more fundamental theory is typically introduced in response to certain inaccuracies in the predictions made by the less fundamental theory around the margins of its domain of successful application; and this is exactly the domain where the two theories overlap. In this case, the more fundamental theory is bound to present a more adequate account of the phenomena. Or is it?
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