Morita Equivalence

Logicians and philosophers of science have proposed various formal criteria for theoretical equivalence. In this paper, we examine two such proposals: definitional equivalence and categorical equivalence. In order to show precisely how these two well-known criteria are related to one another, we investigate an intermediate criterion called Morita equivalence.Comment: 30 page

Distances between formal theories

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 define two main notions for such distances. A natural definition is that of axiomatic distance, but we argue that it might be of limited interest. The more interesting and widely applicable definition is that of conceptual distance which measures the minimum number of concepts that separate 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. We end with a philosophical discussion of the significance of these approaches

Distances between formal theories

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 define two main notions for such distances. A natural definition is that of axiomatic distance, but we argue that it might be of limited interest. The more interesting and widely applicable definition is that of conceptual distance which measures the minimum number of concepts that separate 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. We end with a philosophical discussion of the significance of these approaches

Distances Between Formal Theories

In the literature, there have been several methods and definitions for working out whether two theories are "equivalent" (essentially the same) or not. In this article, we do something subtler. We provide a means to measure distances (and explore connections) between formal theories. We introduce two natural notions for such distances. The first one is that of axiomatic distance, but we argue that it might be of limited interest. The more interesting and widely applicable notion is that of 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. © 2019 BMJ Publishing Group. All rights reserved