Abstraction, Explanation, and Effective Field Theories

TL;DR

This paper explores how effective field theories serve as abstract, explanatory models that approximate more fundamental theories, shedding light on philosophical issues of idealization and representation in scientific explanation.

Contribution

It conceptualizes EFTs as abstract models that preserve explanation from fundamental theories, clarifying their role in scientific modeling and explanation.

Findings

EFTs are viewed as abstract models retaining relevant features.

Abstraction preserves explanation from fundamental to effective theories.

EFTs can serve as explanatory stand-ins for more fundamental models.

Abstract

Effective field theories (EFTs) are widely considered by physicists to be explanatory and to be the appropriate frameworks for modelling various phenomena at different scales. At the same time, they are known to be approximate, restricted, and merely effective, and thus, examining them can provide a means of getting traction on philosophical issues such as idealisation, abstraction, and the veridicality of representations in explanation. This paper casts EFTs as \textit{abstract} models of a more fundamental theory that retain all and only the relevant aspects for a given explanandum. I describe abstraction as a process that can preserve explanation top-down from an independently explanatory fundamental theory to an effective theory. Thus the paper aims to show how abstract models, like EFTs, can function as explanatory stand-ins for more fundamental models, something often taken to be unproblematic.