Unifying Scientific Theories: Physical Concepts and Mathematical Structures

This book is about the methods used for unifying different scientific theories under one all-embracing theory. The process has characterized much of the history of science and is prominent in contemporary physics; the search for a ‘theory of everything’ involves the same attempt at unification. Margaret Morrison argues that, contrary to popular philosophical views, unification and explanation often have little to do with each other. The mechanisms that facilitate unification are not those that enable us to explain how or why phenomena behave as they do. A feature of this book is an account of many case studies of theory unification in nineteenth- and twentieth-century physics and of how evolution by natural selection and Mendelian genetics were unified into what we now term evolutionary genetics.

• A major challenge to contemporary thinking about scientific explanation • Addresses both biology and physical sciences • Wide range of historical case studies incorporated e.g. Kepler, Maxwell and Darwin

Acknowledgements; Introduction; 1. The many faces of unity; 2. Unification, realism and inference; 3. Maxwell’s unification of electromagnetism and optics; 4. Gauges, symmetries and forces: the electroweak unification; 5. Special relativity and the unity of physics; 6. Darwin and natural selection: unification versus explanation; 7. Structural unity and the biological synthesis; Conclusions; Notes; References; Index.