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Scientific Realism In Particle Physics
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Book Synopsis Scientific Realism in Particle Physics by : Matthias Egg
Download or read book Scientific Realism in Particle Physics written by Matthias Egg and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2014-08-19 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Particle physics studies highly complex processes which cannot be directly observed. Scientific realism claims that we are nevertheless warranted in believing that these processes really occur and that the objects involved in them really exist. This book defends a version of scientific realism, called causal realism, in the context of particle physics. The first part of the book introduces the central theses and arguments in the recent philosophical debate on scientific realism and discusses entity realism, which is the most important precursor of causal realism. It also argues against the view that the very debate on scientific realism is not worth pursuing at all. In the second part, causal realism is developed and the key distinction between two kinds of warrant for scientific claims is clarified. This distinction proves its usefulness in a case study analyzing the discovery of the neutrino. It is also shown to be effective against an influential kind of pessimism, according to which even our best present theories are likely to be replaced some day by radically distinct alternatives. The final part discusses some specific challenges posed to realism by quantum physics, such as non-locality, delayed choice and the absence of particles in relativistic quantum theories.
Book Synopsis Contemporary Scientific Realism by : Timothy D. Lyons
Download or read book Contemporary Scientific Realism written by Timothy D. Lyons and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-06-08 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Scientific realists claim we can justifiably believe that science is getting at the truth. However, they have faced historical challenges: various episodes across history appear to demonstrate that even strongly supported scientific theories can be overturned and left behind. In response, realists have developed new positions and arguments. As a result of specific challenges from the history of science, and realist responses, we find ourselves with an ever-increasing dataset bearing on the (possible) relationship between science and truth. The present volume introduces new historical cases impacting the debate and advances the discussion of cases that have only very recently been introduced. At the same time, shifts in philosophical positions affect the very kind of case study that is relevant. Thus, the historical work must proceed hand in hand with philosophical analysis of the different positions and arguments in play. It is with this in mind that the volume is divided into two sections, entitled "Historical Cases for the Debate" and "Contemporary Scientific Realism." All sides agree that historical cases are informative with regard to how, or whether, science connects with truth. Defying proclamations as early as the 1980s announcing the death knell of the scientific realism debate, here is that rare thing: a philosophical debate making steady and definite progress. Moreover, the progress it is making concerns one of humanity's most profound and important questions: the relationship between science and truth, or, put more boldly, the epistemic relation between humankind and the reality in which we find ourselves.
Book Synopsis Scientific Realism and the Quantum by : Steven French
Download or read book Scientific Realism and the Quantum written by Steven French and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2020-02 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum theory is widely regarded as one of the most successful theories in the history of science. It explains a hugely diverse array of phenomena and is a natural candidate for our best representation of the world at the level of 'fundamental' physics. But how can the world be the way quantum theory says it is? It is famously unclear what the world is like according to quantum physics, which presents a serious problem for the scientific realist who is committed to regarding our best theories as more or less true. The present volume canvasses a variety of responses to this problem, from restricting or revising realism in different ways to exploring entirely new directions in the lively debate surrounding realist interpretations of quantum physics. Some urge us to focus on new formulations of the theory itself, while others examine the status of scientific realism in the further context of quantum field theory. Each chapter is written by a renowned specialist in the field and is aimed at graduate students and researchers in both physics and the philosophy of science. Together they offer a range of illuminating new perspectives on this fundamental debate and exemplify the fruitful interaction between physics and philosophy.
Book Synopsis Particle Metaphysics by : Brigitte Falkenburg
Download or read book Particle Metaphysics written by Brigitte Falkenburg and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2007-03-21 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are the particles of modern physics "real" or are they virtual entities, their existence deduced merely by abstract theories? This book examines the continuing debate regarding the inner constitution of matter by exploring the particle concept in physics. It investigates if the particles of particle physics are real or not. Readers interested in the "true meaning" of such physical concepts will find this book informative and thought provoking.
Book Synopsis Philosophy of Science by : Samir Okasha
Download or read book Philosophy of Science written by Samir Okasha and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "In this new edition Samir Ikasha reviews the main themes of contemporary philosophy of science. Beginning with a brief account of the history of modern science, he asks whether there is a discernible pattern to the way scientific ideas change over time. He examines scientific inference, scientific explanation, and the debate between realist and anti-realist views of science."--
Book Synopsis The Reality of the Unobservable by : E. Agazzi
Download or read book The Reality of the Unobservable written by E. Agazzi and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-04-17 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Observability and Scientific Realism It is commonly thought that the birth of modern natural science was made possible by an intellectual shift from a mainly abstract and specuJative conception of the world to a carefully elaborated image based on observations. There is some grain of truth in this claim, but this grain depends very much on what one takes observation to be. In the philosophy of science of our century, observation has been practically equated with sense perception. This is understandable if we think of the attitude of radical empiricism that inspired Ernst Mach and the philosophers of the Vienna Circle, who powerfully influenced our century's philosophy of science. However, this was not the atti tude of the f ounders of modern science: Galileo, f or example, expressed in a f amous passage of the Assayer the conviction that perceptual features of the world are merely subjective, and are produced in the 'anima!' by the motion and impacts of unobservable particles that are endowed uniquely with mathematically expressible properties, and which are therefore the real features of the world. Moreover, on other occasions, when defending the Copernican theory, he explicitly remarked that in admitting that the Sun is static and the Earth turns on its own axis, 'reason must do violence to the sense' , and that it is thanks to this violence that one can know the tme constitution of the universe.
Book Synopsis Varieties of Scientific Realism by : Evandro Agazzi
Download or read book Varieties of Scientific Realism written by Evandro Agazzi and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-03-08 with total page 405 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a comprehensive update on the scientific realism debate, enabling readers to gain a novel appreciation of the role of objectivity and truth in science and to understand fully the various ways in which antirealist conceptions have been subjected to challenge over recent decades. Authoritative representatives of different philosophical traditions explain their perspectives on the meaning and validity of scientific realism and describe the strategies being adopted to counter persisting antirealist positions. The coverage extends beyond the usual discussion of realism within the context of the natural sciences, and especially physics, to encompass also its applicability in mathematics, logic, and the human sciences. The book will appeal to all with an interest in the recent realist epistemologies of science, the nature of current philosophical debate, and the ongoing rehabilitation of truth as the legitimate goal of scientific research.
Book Synopsis Quantum Mind and Social Science by : Alexander Wendt
Download or read book Quantum Mind and Social Science written by Alexander Wendt and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2015-04-23 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unique contribution to the understanding of social science, showing the implications of quantum physics for the nature of human society.
Book Synopsis The Ideas of Particle Physics by : G. D. Coughlan
Download or read book The Ideas of Particle Physics written by G. D. Coughlan and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2006-07-27 with total page 84 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A readable introduction to particle physics for anyone with a background in physical sciences.
Book Synopsis Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality by : Valia Allori
Download or read book Quantum Mechanics and Fundamentality written by Valia Allori and published by . This book was released on 2022 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This edited collection provides new perspectives on some metaphysical questions arising in quantum mechanics. These questions have been long-standing and are of continued interest to researchers and graduate students working in physics, philosophy of physics and metaphysics. It features contributions from a diverse set of researchers, ranging from senior scholars to junior academics, working in varied fields, from physics to philosophy of physics and metaphysics. The contributors reflect on issues about fundamentality (is quantum theory fundamental? If so, what is its fundamental ontology?), ontological dependence (how do ordinary objects exist even if they are not fundamental?), realism (what kind of realism is compatible with quantum theory?), indeterminacy (can the world itself exhibit ontological indeterminacy?). With contributions from both physicists (including Nobel Prize winner Gerard 't Hooft), science communicators and philosophers. .
Book Synopsis Bell's Theorem and Quantum Realism by : Douglas L. Hemmick
Download or read book Bell's Theorem and Quantum Realism written by Douglas L. Hemmick and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2011-10-02 with total page 104 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Quantum theory presents a strange picture of the world, offering no real account of physical properties apart from observation. Neils Bohr felt that this reflected a core truth of nature: "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract mathematical description." Among the most significant developments since Bohr’s day has been the theorem of John S. Bell. It is important to consider whether Bell’s analysis supports such a denial of microrealism. In this book, we evaluate the situation in terms of an early work of Erwin Schrödinger. Doing so, we see how Bell’s theorem is conceptually related to the Conway and Kochen Free Will theorem and also to all the major anti-realism efforts. It is easy to show that none of these analyses imply the impossibility of objective realism. We find that Schrödinger’s work leads to the derivation of a new series of theoretical proofs and potential experiments, each involving “entanglement,” the link between particles in some quantum systems. .
Book Synopsis Quantum Ontology by : Peter J. Lewis
Download or read book Quantum Ontology written by Peter J. Lewis and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Metaphysicians should pay attention to quantum mechanics. Why? Not because it provides definitive answers to many metaphysical questions-the theory itself is remarkably silent on the nature of the physical world, and the various interpretations of the theory on offer present conflicting ontological pictures. Rather, quantum mechanics is essential to the metaphysician because it reshapes standard metaphysical debates and opens up unforeseen new metaphysical possibilities. Even if quantum mechanics provides few clear answers, there are good reasons to think that any adequate understanding of the quantum world will result in a radical reshaping of our classical world-view in some way or other. Whatever the world is like at the atomic scale, it is almost certainly not the swarm of particles pushed around by forces that is often presupposed. This book guides readers through the theory of quantum mechanics and its implications for metaphysics in a clear and accessible way. The theory and its various interpretations are presented with a minimum of technicality. The consequences of these interpretations for metaphysical debates concerning realism, indeterminacy, causation, determinism, holism, and individuality (among other topics) are explored in detail, stressing the novel form that the debates take given the empirical facts in the quantum domain. While quantum mechanics may not deliver unconditional pronouncements on these issues, the range of possibilities consistent with our knowledge of the empirical world is relatively small-and each possibility is metaphysically revisionary in some way. This book will appeal to researchers, students, and anybody else interested in how science informs our world-view.
Book Synopsis The Laws of Scientific Change by : Hakob Barseghyan
Download or read book The Laws of Scientific Change written by Hakob Barseghyan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-17 with total page 275 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book systematically creates a general descriptive theory of scientific change that explains the mechanics of changes in both scientific theories and the methods of their assessment. It was once believed that, while scientific theories change through time, their change itself is governed by a fixed method of science. Nowadays we know that there is no such thing as an unchangeable method of science; the criteria employed by scientists in theory evaluation also change through time. But if that is so, how and why do theories and methods change? Are there any general laws that govern this process, or is the choice of theories and methods completely arbitrary and random? Contrary to the widespread opinion, the book argues that scientific change is indeed a law-governed process and that there can be a general descriptive theory of scientific change. It does so by first presenting meta-theoretical issues, divided into chapters on the scope, possibility and assessment of theory of scientific change. It then builds a theory about the general laws that govern the process of scientific change, and goes into detail about the axioms and theorems of the theory.
Book Synopsis Process Realism in Physics by : William Penn
Download or read book Process Realism in Physics written by William Penn and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2023-07-04 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Science should tell us what the world is like. However, realist interpretations of physics face many problems, chief among them the pessimistic meta induction. This book seeks to develop a realist position based on process ontology that avoids the traditional problems of realism. Primarily, the core claim is that in order for a scientific model to be minimally empirically adequate, that model must describe real experimental processes and dynamics. Any additional inferences from processes to things, substances or objects are not warranted, and so these inferences are shown to represent the locus of the problems of realism. The book then examines the history of physics to show that the progress of physical research is one of successive eliminations of thing interpretations of models in favor of more explanatory and experimentally verified process interpretations. This culminates in collections of models that cannot coherently allow for thing interpretations, but still successfully describe processes.
Book Synopsis Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism by : Christopher Norris
Download or read book Quantum Theory and the Flight from Realism written by Christopher Norris and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a critical introduction to the long-standing debate concerning the conceptual foundations of quantum mechanics and the problems it has posed for physicists and philosophers from Einstein to the present. Quantum theory has been a major infulence on postmodernism, and presents significant problems for realists. Keeping his own realist position in check, Christopher Norris subjects a wide range of key opponents and supporters of realism to a high and equal level of scrutiny. With a characteristic combination of rigour and intellectual generosity, he draws out the merits and weaknesses from opposing arguments. In a sequence of closely argued chapters, Norris examines the premises of orthodox quantum theory, as developed most influentially by Bohr and Heisenberg, and its impact on varous philosophical developments. These include the ideas developed by W.V Quine, Thomas Kuhn, Michael Dummett, Bas van Fraassen, and Hilary Puttnam. In each case, Norris argues, these thinkers have been influenced by the orthodox construal of quantum mechanics as requiring drastic revision of principles which had hitherto defined the very nature of scientific method, causal explanati and rational enquiry. Putting the case for a realist approach which adheres to well-tried scientific principles of causal reasoning and inference to the best explanation, Christopher Norris clarifies these debates to a non-specialist readership and scholars of philosophy, science studies and the philosophy of science alike. Quantum Theory and the Flight From Realism suggests that philosophical reflection can contribute to a better understanding of these crucial, current issues.
Book Synopsis The World in the Wave Function by : Alyssa Ney
Download or read book The World in the Wave Function written by Alyssa Ney and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-16 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: If quantum theories of the world are true-and empirical evidence suggests they are-what do they tell us about us, and the world? How should quantum theories make us reevaluate our classical conceptions of material objects? Nearly a century after the development of quantum theories, a consensus has yet to emerge. Many still wonder about what these theories may be telling us about ourselves and our place in the universe. Alyssa Ney here defends and develops a particular framework for understanding the world as it is described by quantum theories. This framework was initially suggested by Schrödinger in the 1920's and was further defended as an account of reality by two philosophers of physics in the 1990's who described it as a necessary point of view for those who argue that quantum theories are correct representations of our world. This framework is called wave function realism, which interprets quantum theories such that its central object is the quantum wave function, interpreted as a field on an extremely high-dimension space. This theory views us, and all objects, as ultimately constituted out of the wave function, and though we seem to occupy three dimensions, the fundamental spatial framework of quantum worlds consists of many more dimensions. Alyssa Ney argues for and advances this view, with the goal of making a case for how this theory how it might be applied to more other relativistic quantum theories, including quantum field theories. Her conclusion develops an account of how we as human beings might ultimately see ourselves and the objects around us as constituted out of the wave function.
Download or read book The Shaky Game written by Arthur Fine and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1996-12-15 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this new edition, Arthur Fine looks at Einstein's philosophy of science and develops his own views on realism. A new Afterword discusses the reaction to Fine's own theory. "What really led Einstein . . . to renounce the new quantum order? For those interested in this question, this book is compulsory reading."—Harvey R. Brown, American Journal of Physics "Fine has successfully combined a historical account of Einstein's philosophical views on quantum mechanics and a discussion of some of the philosophical problems associated with the interpretation of quantum theory with a discussion of some of the contemporary questions concerning realism and antirealism. . . . Clear, thoughtful, [and] well-written."—Allan Franklin, Annals of Science "Attempts, from Einstein's published works and unpublished correspondence, to piece together a coherent picture of 'Einstein realism.' Especially illuminating are the letters between Einstein and fellow realist Schrödinger, as the latter was composing his famous 'Schrödinger-Cat' paper."—Nick Herbert, New Scientist "Beautifully clear. . . . Fine's analysis is penetrating, his own results original and important. . . . The book is a splendid combination of new ways to think about quantum mechanics, about realism, and about Einstein's views of both."—Nancy Cartwright, Isis
