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14Plato on Time and the World (edited book)Springer Verlag. 2023.This book focuses on two central topics that could help us answer how Plato conceives of the physical world and its relationship to Forms. The first one is the Platonic concept of time. What is it, how is it defined, what is it not, and how does it help us describe the changing realities surrounding us? The second one is Plato’s understanding of the perceptible world. How is it related to Forms, and how exactly does it work? These are central, wide-ranging, and highly contested questions garneri…Read more
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5The Image of the Universe and Its Purpose: Kant on Hypotyposis and Functional CosmologyIn Laura Follesa & Federico Vercellone (eds.), Bilddenken und Morphologie: Interdisziplinäre Studien über Form und Bilder im philosophischen und wissenschaftlichen Denken, De Gruyter. pp. 23-36. 2021.
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56Cartesian echoes in Kant’s philosophy of natureStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 44 (3): 481-492. 2013.
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64Explanation and the dimensionality of space: Kant’s argument revisitedSynthese 192 (1): 287-303. 2015.The question of the dimensionality of space has informed the development of physics since the beginning of the twentieth century in the quest for a unified picture of quantum processes and gravitation. Scientists have worked within various approaches to explain why the universe appears to have a certain number of spatial dimensions. The question of why space has three dimensions has a genuinely philosophical nature that can be shaped as a problem of justifying a contingent necessity of the world…Read more
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40Combining finite and infinite elements: Why do we use infinite idealizations in engineering?Synthese 196 (5): 1733-1748. 2019.This contribution sheds light on the role of infinite idealization in structural analysis, by exploring how infinite elements and finite element methods are combined in civil engineering models. This combination, I claim, should be read in terms of a ‘complementarity function’ through which the representational ideal of completeness is reached in engineering model-building. Taking a cue from Weisberg’s definition of multiple-model idealization, I highlight how infinite idealizations are primaril…Read more
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19Special Section IntroductionHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 122-128. 2022.SPECIAL SECTION: BUILDING UNIVERSES: THE PHILOSOPHICAL AND MATHEMATICAL UNDERPINNINGS OF COSMOLOGY (EIGHTEENTH–TWENTIETH CENTURIES)
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42Kant’s Functional Cosmology: Teleology, Measurement, and Symbolic Representation in the Critique of JudgmentHopos: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 12 (1): 209-224. 2022.In the 1780s Kant’s critique of rational cosmology clearly identified the limits of theoretical cosmology in agreement with the doctrine of transcendental idealism of space and time. However, what seems to be less explored, and remains still a desideratum for the literature, is a thorough investigation of the implications of transcendental philosophy for Kant’s view of cosmology in the 1790s. This contribution fills this gap by investigating Kant’s view of teleology and measurement in the Critiq…Read more
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81Grounding ontic structuralismSynthese 199 (1-2): 5205-5223. 2021.A respectable assessment of priority-based ontic structuralism demands an elucidation of its metaphysical backbone. Here we focus on two theses that stand in need of clarification: the Fundamentality Thesis states that structures are fundamental, and the Priority Thesis states that these structures are prior to putative fundamental objects, if these exist. Candidate notions to illuminate and such as supervenience and ontological dependence failed at this task. Our purpose is to show that groundi…Read more
Silvia Bianchi
Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSS
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Scuola Universitaria Superiore IUSSDoctoral student
Areas of Specialization
Metaphysics and Epistemology |
Science, Logic, and Mathematics |