No evidence of “new physics” was found so far by LHC experiments, and this situation has led some voices in the physics community to call for the abandonment of the “naturalness” criterion, while other scientists have felt the need to break a lance in its defense by claiming that, at least in some sense, it has already led to successes and therefore should not be dismissed too quickly, but rather only reflected or reshaped to fit new needs. In our paper (...) we will argue that present pro-or-contra naturalness debates miss the fundamental point that naturalness, despite contrary claims, is essentially a very hazily defined, in a sense even mythical notion which, in the course of more than four decades, has been steadily, and often not coherently, shaped by its interplay with different branches of model-building in high-energy physics and cosmology on the one side, and new incoming experimental results on the other. In our paper we will endeavor to clear up some of the physical and philosophical haze by taking a closer look back at (real or alleged) origin of naturalness in the 1970s and 1980s, with particular attention to the early work of Kenneth Wilson. In doing this, we aim to bring to light how naturalness belongs to a long tradition of present and past physical and philosophical criteria for effectively guiding theoretical reflection and experimental practice in fundamental research. (shrink)

The thesis of my paper is that argumentation theory provides a promising heuristic framework for addressing issues raised by the rationality debates in the philosophy of science, in particular the issues connected with scientific controversies over the appraisal and choice of competing theories. The first part of the paper grounds this thesis historically. In criticizing the logical empiricists, Thomas Kuhn set the stage for the subsequent opposition between a normative, anti-sociological philosophy of science and a descriptive, anti-philosophical sociology of knowledge. (...) But he also hinted at the main lines of a multi-dimensional theory of argumentation which might frame a wide range of current investigations into scientific reasoning. In the second part of the paper I focus on the central normative aspect of this framework, dialectical argumentation, and clarify the key challenge, the underdetermination of theories by evidence. In the third part, I attempt to get beyond the dichotomy informing the rationality debates by reformulating the problem of theory choice within a broader context of scientific rationality. (shrink)

Theory-ladenness is the view that observation cannot function in an unbiased way in the testing of theories because observational judgments are affected by the theoretical beliefs of the observer. Its more radical cousin, incommensurability, argues that because there is no theory-neutral language, paradigms, or worldviews, cannot be compared because in different paradigms the meaning of observational terms is different, even when the word used is the same. There are both philosophical and practical components to these problems. I argue, using a (...) procedurally-defined, theory-neutral experiment that paradigms are indeed commensurable. The practical problems of theory ladenness include experimental design, failure to interpret observations correctly, possible experimenter bias, and difficulties in data acquisition. I suggest that there are methods to deal with these problems, although sometimes they cannot be dealt with completely. I believe that the philosophical problems of theory-ladenness have been solved, although the practical problems remain. (shrink)

Experiments often disagree. How then can scientific knowledge be based on experimental evidence? In this paper I will examine four episodes from the history of recent physics: the suggestion of a Fifth Force, a modification of Newton’s law of gravitation; early attempts to detect gravitational radiation ; the claim that a 17-keV neutrino exists; and experiments on atomic-parity violation and on the scattering of polarized electrons and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions. In each of these (...) episodes discordant results were reported, and a consensus was later reached that one result—or set of results—was incorrect. I will examine the process of reaching that consensus. I will show that the decision was reached by reasoned discussion based on epistemological and methodological criteria. It then follows that we may use experimental evidence as the basis of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

The last forty years have produced a dramatic reversal in leading accounts of science. Once thought necessary to (explain) scientific progress, a rigid method of science is now widely considered impossible. Study of products yields to study of processes and practices, .unity gives way to diversity, generality to particularity, logic to luck, and final justification to heuristic scaffolding. I sketch the story, from Bacon and Descartes to the present, of the decline and fall of traditional scientific method, conceived as The (...) Central Planning Bureau for Science or as Rationality Czar. I defend a deflationary account of method and of rational judgment,. with emphasis on heuristic appraisal and cognitive economy. (shrink)

Recent work by historians and philosophers has called attention to the complexity of modern experimental physics and its intricate relation to interpretive and explanatory theory (Franklin 1987, Hacking 1983, Galison 1987 and 1989, Pickering 1984 and 1987). One point of general agreement has been that the contexts of discovery and justification often significantly overlap and do not uniformly correlate with experiment and theory. Instead, intended applications, instrumentation, experiment, phenomenological description, explicative models, and explanatory theory all act both as incentives and (...) as constraints during the production of scientific knowledge. The present paper investigates how one node of this network operates in the domain of solid state physics and chemistry. In particular, a case study analysis of how models function in transition metal oxide research provides ample support for several conclusions.First, it must be emphasized that the term “theory” can have misleading connotations in this domain if it is allowed to imply a single and foundational level of explanatory generality. (shrink)

I outline a pragmatic view of scientists' use of observation which draws attention to non-discursive, instrumental and social contexts of observation, in order to explain scientists' agreement about the appearance and significance of new phenomena. I argue that: observation is embedded in a network of activities, techniques, and interests; that experimentalists make construals of new phenomena which enable them communicate exploratory techniques and their outcomes, and that empirical enquiry consists of communicative, exploratory and predictive strategies whose interdependence ensures that, notwithstanding (...) the constructedness of representations and the empirical underdetermination of theories, observations contain information about the natural world. (shrink)

In this article I suggest a tripartite classification of scientific activity; discovery, pursuit, and justification. I believe that such a classification can give us a more adequate description of scientific practice, help illuminate the various roles that evidence plays in science, and may also help to partially resolve differences between “constructivist” and “epistemologist” views of science. I argue that although factors suggested by the constructivists such as career goals, professional interests, utility for future practice, and agreement with existing commitments do (...) enter into pursuit, it is experimental evidence that is decisive in justification. I illustrate this with two case studies from the history of contemporary science, experiments on atomic parity violation and their relation to the Weinberg-Salam unified theory of electroweak interactions and the fifth force in gravity. I also answer some of the criticisms offered of my earlier account of the episode of atomic parity violation. (shrink)

Jarrett Leplin in A Novel Defense of Scientific Realism (1997) argues that if the thesis of empirical equivalence is cogent, then the thesis of underdetermination cannot even get off the ground. Part of Leplin's argument rests on the claim that auxiliary hypotheses can be independently confirmed, thus enabling us to determine the epistemic worth of a theory. This, in turn, helps in determining about what we should be realists. Leplin's claims are demonstrated to be problematic. Leplin wants, inconsistently, to use (...) only those auxiliary hypotheses which dovetail with confirmed theories. Finally, a detail of Leplin's argument is found wanting. (shrink)

This article explores testing as research site in the sociology of technology. A fully generalizable analysis is offered of testing in terms of a notion of projection. Prospective, current, and retrospective testing are identified The article is illustrated with examples of testing a clinical budgeting system in the United Kingdom National Health Service and the testing of the O-rings on the space shuttle Challenger. Lastly, the theme of "testing the user" is developed Some comments are offered on the pervasiveness of (...) testing in society at large. (shrink)

Ethnomethodologists (or at least many of them) have been reticent about their theoretical sources and methodological principles. It frequently falls to others to make such matters explicit. In this paper I discuss this silence about theory, but rather than entering the breach by specifying a set of implicit assumptions and principles, I suggest that the reticence is consistent with ethnomethodology's distinctive research 'program'. The main part of the paper describes the pedagogical exercises and forms of apprenticeship through which Garfinkel and (...) Sacks aimed to develop ethnomethodology as a practice. These efforts were not entirely successful, partly because ethnomethodological 'practice' required an engagement with other fully-fledged practices. Aside from the difficulties of mastering such practices, it was unclear what an ethnomethodological study would add to, or take from, them. Whether successful or not, ethnomethodological research points to the specificity of discourse and action in any given practice which a general theory is bound to misconstrue. Current disputes about cultural constructivist versions of natural science illustrate the problems that arise when the terms of a general theory are used to describe and evaluate specific domains of practice. The paper concludes by recommending ethnomethodology as a way to dissolve an unbridgeable gap between cultural theories and socially located practices. (shrink)

Some twenty years ago, Bogen and Woodward challenged one of the fundamental assumptions of the received view, namely the theory-observation dichotomy and argued for the introduction of the further category of scientific phenomena. The latter, Bogen and Woodward stressed, are usually unobservable and inferred from what is indeed observable, namely scientific data. Crucially, Bogen and Woodward claimed that theories predict and explain phenomena, but not data. But then, of course, the thesis of theory-ladenness, which has it that our observations are (...) influenced by the theories we hold, cannot apply. On the basis of two case studies, I want to show that this consequence of Bogen and Woodward’s account is rather unrealistic. More importantly, I also object against Bogen and Woodward’s view that the reliability of data, which constitutes the precondition for data-to-phenomena inferences, can be secured without the theory one seeks to test. The case studies I revisit have figured heavily in the publications of Bogen and Woodward and others: the discovery of weak neutral currents and the discovery of the zebra pattern of magnetic anomalies. I show that, in the latter case, data can be ignored if they appear to be irrelevant from a particular theoretical perspective (TLI) and that, in the former case, the tested theory can be critical for the assessment of the reliability of the data (TLA). I argue that both TLI and TLA are much stronger senses of theory-ladenness than the classical thesis and that neither TLI nor TLA can be accommodated within Bogen and Woodward’s account. (shrink)

In a widely received paper on theory choice, Kuhn made three central claims. First, as a matter of empirical fact, different theories tend to score differently with regard to what Kuhn considered to be the standard set of theoretical virtues, i.e., empirical accuracy, internal and external consistency, scope, simplicity, and fertility. Whereas some theories will for instance be more empirically accurate than others, other theories will have greater external coherence with our background theories. Second, hardly ever does a theory’s being (...) virtuous in one particular respect legitimize a choice for that theory—not even when that virtue is empirical accuracy. Third, following from the first two .. (shrink)

This article examines in detail a remarkable but short-lived cosmological theory of 1959. The theory depended crucially on a hypothesis that could be, and was, tested in the laboratory. I use the case to discuss the nature of testing in cosmology and to argue against ideas about astronomy suggested by Ian Hacking. The case of the electrical universe exemplifies how disagreements can be settled by good experiments and also how experiments of wide-ranging theoretical significance need not be biased by either (...) theory or the experimentalists’ predisposed ideas. I argue that the episode supports Allan Franklins “evidence model” and disputes accounts based on the sociology of scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This article seeks rapprochement between the sociology of knowledge and philosophy of science by attempting to capture the best social constructionist insights within a strongly realistic philosophy of science. Key to doing so are separating the grounds for the individual scientist coming to know that P from those grounds for socially credentialing the claim that P within the relevant scientific subcommunity and showing how truth considerations can enter into the analysis of knowledge without interfering with social constructionist treatments of credentialing (...) claims. A detailed epistemology and associated account of the social credentialing of knowledge claims are presented. Close attention is paid to the epistemological and social aspects of the nature and role of observation reports, the interpretation of data, simplifications, idealizations, and approximations, and the nature of replication. The article contains a National Aeronautics and Space Administration remote-sensing case study and a detailed analysis of replication in the 1881–1933 Michelson-Morley-Miller interferometer ether studies. (shrink)

Ever since Hilary Putnam claimed that a realist philosophy is “the only philosophy that doesn’t make the success of science a miracle,” explanations for the success of science have proliferated in the philosophical literature (Putnam 1975, p. 73). Realists argue that the success of science, as exhibited by our ability to accurately predict and explain a wide range of phenomena, indicates that our theories have identified some of the underlying causal structures of the world (e.g., Boyd 1985, Ellis 1985, McMullin (...) 1984, Salmon 1984). Nonrealists counter that success cannot provide a warrant for belief in the truth of scientific theories because there have been successful theories in the past that are now believed to be false (Laudan 1981b). Instead, they offer a naturalized account whereby our theories are designed to be successful predictors and only those which fulfill this goal survive (Laudan 1987, van Fraassen, 1980). (shrink)

The paper studies the topography of the model landscape of the physics in the Higgs sector both within the Standard Model of Elementary Particle Physics and beyond in the months before the discovery of a SM Higgs boson. At first glance, this landscape appears fragmented into a large number of different models and research communities. But it also clusters around certain guiding ideas, among them supersymmetry or dynamical symmetry breaking, in which representative and narrative features of the models are combined. (...) These models do not stand for themselves, waiting to be experimentally confirmed and elevated to the status of theory. Rather do they, quite in the sense advocated by Morgan and Morrison, enjoy a far-reaching autonomy. Typically models in the Higgs sector entertain three types of mediating relationships. First, they mediate between the SM and the data in those instances where the SM contains some uncertainty in the values of its basic parameters. Second, they mediate between BSM physics and the data by instantiating the core ideas behind these often speculative generalizations of the SM as stories—in Hartmann’s sense—that motivate or justify the respective model. Third, the fact that Higgs models within BSM physics reproduce the SM predictions in the low-energy limit functions as a consistency constraint that does not involve any additional autonomy. Due to the second type of mediating relationship, the representative features of Higgs models BSM are complex. (shrink)