2014/04/11 by Raymond Lal, Lal, Raymond, Nicholas J. Teh +1
Arts and Humanities · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #History and Philosophy of Physics (physics.hist-ph) #Origins and Evolution of Life #Philosophy and History of Science #Quantum Mechanics and Applications #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #physics.hist-ph #quant-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1404.3049
34 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2014/04/11 · openalex publication_date 2014/04/11 · arxiv updated 2014/04/14 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Category theory has become central to certain aspects of theoretical physics. Bain [Synthese, 190:1621--1635 (2013)] has recently argued that this has significance for ontic structural realism. We argue against this claim. In so doing, we uncover two pervasive forms of category-theoretic generalization. We call these `generalization by duality' and `generalization by categorifying physical processes'. We describe in detail how these arise, and explain their significance using detailed examples. We show that their significance is two-fold: the articulation of high-level physical concepts, and the generation of new models.