In Patterns of Discovery, [1], and Concept of the Positron, [2], the late N. R. Hanson put forward an intersting and, I believe, essentially sound argument to the effect that, necessarily, micro-entities are "unpicturable." Hanson's claim is centrally a claim about microreduction, but his use of the term 'unpicturable' may be misleading, generating critiques which overplay its implications and its importance. A. M. Paul, in a recent article, [4], has taken Hanson to task in this regard, claiming that the notion (...) of picturability is so cloudy as to render Hanson's whole enterprise unconvincing. In what follows I shall critically discuss Hanson's argument and Paul's analysis and attempt to state a version of it capable of meeting Paul's objections. I will claim that Hanson's use of the term 'unpicturable' may be, at worst, infelicitous, and that his thesis concerning micro- or property-reduction remains unaffected by questions concerning what we can or cannot picture. (shrink)

Since the appearance of T. S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, scholars from various fields have sought to evaluate their disciplines in the light of Kuhnian criteria for scientific change. In this paper I argue that a new paradigm seems needed in high energy physics, and that there is no more reason to say that matter is made of elementary particles, than to say that it is not. My argument, that high energy physics is approaching a state of crisis, (...) and that a new paradigm is needed, is based on an examination of two events which, according to Kuhn, presage a conceptual revolution: (1) the "old" paradigm of normal science becomes unclear; and (2) this paradigm fails to support normal problem solving research, and scientists begin to use it as if it were merely definitional. After examining the elementary particles paradigm in the light of these two criteria, I conclude that high energy physics is moving from "normal science" to "extraordinary science." I argue neither that a new paradigm has been found, nor that a return to normal science is imminent; instead I attempt to briefly outline some of the conceptual problems in high energy physics to which Heisenberg, Feynman, and others have alluded, but which so far have not been spelled out in any great philosophical detail. No attempt is made to argue about what the specific consequences of these difficulties might be, but merely to begin to clarify the problems facing scientists dealing with elementary particles. (shrink)