2 - The Physics of the Principles and its Philosophy: Hamilton, Poincaré and Ramsey

Abstract

Ramsey's theories appeared at a time when the philosophy of science was dominated by various extreme forms of empiricism such as Mach's and Russell's phenomenalism, the logical positivism of the early Vienna Circle, Bridgman's operationalism, and Watson's behaviorism. In his theories, Ramsey constructed a simple example of a theory with two universes of discourse: one called the primary and the other the secondary system. Propositions of the primary system, which represent facts to be explained, are truth functions of quantifier-free expressions formed from predicate or function symbols A, B, C, D, and a suitable number of individual constants as names of the individuals of the primary system. These individuals might be, for example, instants of time, in which case their names would be integers and the propositions would be one-valued numerical functions. Such atomic propositions and at least some of the truth functions of such atomic propositions are empirical in nature. The secondary system is obtained by a single expansion of the primary system.