Samuel Fletcher, logic & philosophy of science graduate student, has received a $11,700 grant from the National Science Foundation to support his doctoral dissertation research on notions of similarity.

“Notions of similarity play an important role in science for understanding concepts such as approximation and idealization and the relationships between different theories,” he says. “I’m interested in how they work in the context of Einstein's general theory of relativity, our best current scientific theory of space, time, and gravitation.”

The study will help to reveal how notions of similarity constrain what we can know and what our theories take to be possible.

Funding for the research began in September and will run through August 2014.