Abstract
What can we discover? As the discussion in this Chapter is limited to ontological considerations, it does not deal with the discovery of new concepts. It raises the following question: What are the entities or existents that we can discover? There are two kinds of such entities: (1) actual entities and (2) possible entities, which are individual pure possibilities. The Chapter explains why the first kind of discovery depends primarily on the second kind. The Chapter illustrates the discoveries of individual pure possibilities by presenting examples such as the Higgs particle, Dirac’s positron, and Pauli-Fermi’s neutrino.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Synthese Library |
Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media B.V. |
Pages | 37-57 |
Number of pages | 21 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - 2020 |
Publication series
Name | Synthese Library |
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Volume | 424 |
ISSN (Print) | 0166-6991 |
ISSN (Electronic) | 2542-8292 |
Bibliographical note
Publisher Copyright:© 2020, Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- History and Philosophy of Science
- History
- Language and Linguistics
- Logic