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David Lewis Meets Hamilton and Jacobi

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Jeremy Butterfield
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Abstract

I commemorate David Lewis by discussing an aspect of modality within analytical mechanics, which is closely related to his work on counterfactuals. This concerns the way Hamilton-Jacobi theory uses ensembles, i.e. sets of possible initial conditions. (A companion paper discusses other aspects of modality in analytical mechanics that are equally related to Lewis's work.)

Type
David Lewis's Contributions to Philosophy of Science
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 71 , Issue 5: Proceedings of the 2002 Biennial Meeting of The Philosophy of Science Association. Part II: Symposia Papers , December 2004 , pp. 1095 - 1106
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 by the Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

‡

Many thanks to: Peter Holland and Graeme Segal for conversations; Alexander Afriat, Robert Bishop, Larry Gould, Susan Sterrett and Paul Teller for comments on a previous version; and Gerard Emch and Klaas Landsman for technical help.

References

Arnold, Vladimir (1989), Mathematical Methods of Classical Mechanics, 2d ed. New York: Springer-Verlag.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butterfield, Jeremy (2003a), “Some Aspects of Modality in Mechanics”, Analytical, forthcoming in Stöltzner, M., and Weingartner, P. (eds.), Formal Teleology and Causality. Paderborn, Germany: Mentis.Google Scholar
Butterfield, Jeremy (2003b), “Postulating All States, Solving All Problems: Some Philosophical Morals of Analytical Mechanics”, in preparation.Google Scholar
Lanczos, Cornelius (1986), The Variational Principles of Mechanics, 4th ed. New York: Dover.Google Scholar
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