DISTANCES BETWEEN FORMAL THEORIES

DOI10.1017/S1755020319000558zbMATH Open1485.03079arXiv1807.01501MaRDI QIDQ5117596FDOQ5117596

Gergely Székely, Michèle Friend, Mohamed Khaled, Koen Lefever

Publication date: 26 August 2020

Published in: The Review of Symbolic Logic (Search for Journal in Brave)

Abstract: In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out if two theories are "equivalent" (essentially the same) or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide means to measure distances (and explore connections) between formal theories. We introduce two main notions for such distances. The first one is that of extit{axiomatic distance}, but we argue that it might be of limited interest. The more interesting and widely applicable notion is that of extit{conceptual distance} which measures the minimum number of concepts that distinguish two theories. For instance, we use conceptual distance to show that relativistic and classical kinematics are distinguished by one concept only. We also develop further notions of distance, and we include a number of suggestions for applying and extending our project.

Full work available at URL: https://arxiv.org/abs/1807.01501

zbMATH Keywords

conceptual distancedegrees of nonequivalencenetwork of theoriesrelativistic and classical kinematics

Mathematics Subject Classification ID

Logic in the philosophy of science (03A10) Cylindric and polyadic algebras; relation algebras (03G15) Other applications of logic (03B80)

Cites Work

• Cylindric algebras. Part II
• Modal languages and bounded fragments of predicate logic
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Complete axiomatizations for quantum actions
• An axiomatic basis for computer programming
• The foundations of thermodynamics
• Natural deduction and arbitrary objects
• Completeness in the theory of types
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• A logic road from special relativity to general relativity
• Properties Preserved under Definitional Equivalence and Interpretations
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Epimorphisms in cylindric algebras and definability in finite variable logic
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• Comparing Classical and Relativistic Kinematics in First-Order Logic
• Glymour and Quine on theoretical equivalence
• Mutual definability does not imply definitional equivalence, a simple example
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• The role of the axiom of induction in elementary arithmetic
• First order logic without equality on relativized semantics
• Axiomatic Definitions of Programming Languages
• The finitely axiomatizable complete theories of non-associative arrow frames
• How many varieties of cylindric algebras are there
• On generalization of definitional equivalence to non-disjoint languages
• On the simplicity of ideas

Cited In (7)

• In the Footsteps of Hilbert: The Andréka-Németi Group’s Logical Foundations of Theories in Physics
• Modal logics that are both monotone and antitone: Makinson's extension results and affinities between logics
• On generalization of definitional equivalence to non-disjoint languages
• On the networks of large embeddings
• Title not available (Why is that?)
• TWO-VARIABLE LOGIC HAS WEAK, BUT NOT STRONG, BETH DEFINABILITY
• Distances, diameters and verisimilitude of theories

This page was built for publication: DISTANCES BETWEEN FORMAL THEORIES

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q5117596)