This paper is a critique of a project, outlined by Laudan et al. (1986) recently in this journal, for empirically testing philosophical models of change in science by comparing them against the historical record of actual scientific practice. While the basic idea of testing such models of change in the arena of science is itself an appealing one, serious questions can be raised about the suitability of seeking confirmation or disconfirmation for large numbers of specific theses drawn from a massive (...) list of claims abstracted from the writings of a few philosophers of science. The present paper discusses what one might reasonably expect from a model of change in science and then compares some clusters of theses from Laudan et al. with developments in recent theoretical physics. The results suggest that such straightforward testing of theses may be largely inconclusive. (shrink)

The received view in philosophical studies of quantum field theory is that Feynman diagrams are simply calculational devices. Alongside this view we have the one that takes virtual quanta to be also simply formal tools. This received view was developed and consolidated in philosophy of physics by Mario Bunge, Paul Teller, Michael Redhead, Robert Weingard, Brigitte Falkenburg, and others. In this article I present an alternative to the received view.

In the recent philosophy of science literature, several authors have stressed the many-faceted and evolving nature of the scientific enterprise. Dudley Shapere (1984, pp. xiii-xv) characterizes a central weakness of the logical empirical program as its focus on the formal logical structure of scientific theories to the exclusion of the process by which these theories were constructed, thus ignoring the possibility of fundamental changes in the nature of science itself. He has stressed the importance of formulating a view of science (...) based on an accurate description of actual scientific practice, which includes attention to how the meaning of a scientific term is rooted in this evolving matrix of practice. Janet Kourany (1982) has attempted” …to lay the foundations for a purely empirical method for establishing a theory of science” (p. 526). In arguing that the a priori has no place in such an approach and in responding to the charge that such an empirical method cannot produce an absolutely fixed set of criteria, Kourany (p. 546) reminds us of Popper’s observation about another empirical enterprise and suggests that we apply this same admonition to our expectations for an empirical method of constructing a theory of science itself. (shrink)

It is not possible to dismiss the atomistic paradigm because the proposed elementary particles are too many (and, hence, it is claimed, they do not provide a simple account of nature) or because it is not possible to observe quarks in an isolated manner. The developments in particle physics have brought about radical changes to our notions of simplicity and observability, and in this paper we elaborate on these changes. It is as a result of these changes that the present (...) situation in elementary particle physics justify us to claim that we have indeed reached a level of explanation where the constituent particles (quarks, leptons, gluons, and intermediate bosons) used for the explanation of the various phenomena considered to be delineating a particular level in the descriptive framework of the physical phenomena and a specific stratum in the organization of nature, can be regarded as elementary. (shrink)

Writing the history of elementary particle physics has all the problems common to writing the history of any other subject “in the making”. There is, however, an additional characteristic, unique to this branch of physics. The development of particle physics, unlike the situation in other branches of physics, reveals a continuously changing picture of what its object of investigation is, of what, in other words, the things we call particles are and how elementary they should be considered. The history of (...) elementary particle physics is, in a way, the history of the continuous reinterpretation of both the ontological and methodological status of the notion of elementarity. Hence, examining the history of elementary particle physics is also an attempt to explicate this changing collective consciousness of the scientific community about the elementarity of particles. In studying, therefore, (practically any aspect of) the history of elementary particle physics, one has to be sensitive about a number of philosophical, and primarily methodological issues which have acquired an added significance due to the relatively recent and mainly theoretical developments. (shrink)

The lowest order processes described within quantum electrodynamics are free from the problems of infinites in the theory, and can be dealt with disregarding the need for charge and mass renormalization. This might indicate that the space-time description of these processes is not only consistent but also could give a privileged insight to the functioning of models provided by the theory. The Møller scattering is as R. P. Feynman considered, a prototype for the development of his rules of quantum electrodynamics (...) and his overall space-time approach. The study of Møller scattering might then provide the must straightforward way to the understanding of the space-time description of interactions provide by quantum electrodynamics. This method is much less powerful than might be expected at first, pointing to the intrinsic limitations of the theory in what regards the modelling of the temporality in interaction processes. (shrink)