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  1. (1 other version)Part 1: Theoretical equivalence in physics.James Owen Weatherall - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (5):e12592.
    I review the philosophical literature on the question of when two physical theories are equivalent. This includes a discussion of empirical equivalence, which is often taken to be necessary, and sometimes taken to be sufficient, for theoretical equivalence; and “interpretational” equivalence, which is the idea that two theories are equivalent just in case they have the same interpretation. It also includes a discussion of several formal notions of equivalence that have been considered in the recent philosophical literature, including (generalized) definitional (...)
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  • The Minimal Modal Interpretation of Quantum Theory.Jacob Barandes & David Kagan - manuscript
    We introduce a realist, unextravagant interpretation of quantum theory that builds on the existing physical structure of the theory and allows experiments to have definite outcomes but leaves the theory’s basic dynamical content essentially intact. Much as classical systems have specific states that evolve along definite trajectories through configuration spaces, the traditional formulation of quantum theory permits assuming that closed quantum systems have specific states that evolve unitarily along definite trajectories through Hilbert spaces, and our interpretation extends this intuitive picture (...)
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  • Epistemology of String Theory in Quantum Gravity.Nicolae Sfetcu - manuscript
    In quantum field theory, the main obstacle is the occurrence of the untreatable infinities in the interactions of the particles due to the possibility of arbitrary distances between the point particles. Strings, as extended objects, provide a better framework, which allows finite calculations. String theory is part of a research program in which point particles in particle physics are replaced by one-dimensional objects called strings. It describes how these strings propagate through space and interact with one another. The purpose of (...)
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  • Epistemology of Experimental Gravity - Scientific Rationality.Nicolae Sfetcu - manuscript
    The evolution of gravitational tests from an epistemological perspective framed in the concept of rational reconstruction of Imre Lakatos, based on his methodology of research programmes. Unlike other works on the same subject, the evaluated period is very extensive, starting with Newton's natural philosophy and up to the quantum gravity theories of today. In order to explain in a more rational way the complex evolution of the gravity concept of the last century, I propose a natural extension of the methodology (...)
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  • Epistemologia gravitației experimentale – Raționalitatea științifică.Nicolae Sfetcu - manuscript
    Evoluția testelor gravitaționale dintr-o perspectivă epistemologică încadrată în conceputul de reconstrucție rațională al lui Imre Lakatos, pe baza metodologiei acestuia a programelor de cercetare. Perioada evaluată este foarte vastă, începând cu filosofia naturală a lui Newton și până la teoriile gravitației cuantice din zilele noastre. Pentru a explica mai rațional evoluția complexă a conceptului de gravitație din ultimul secol, propun o extindere naturală a metodologiei programelor de cercetare pe care o folosesc apoi pe parcursul lucrării. Consider că această abordare oferă (...)
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  • (1 other version)Part 2: Theoretical equivalence in physics.James Owen Weatherall - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (5):e12591.
    I review the philosophical literature on the question of when two physical theories are equivalent. This includes a discussion of empirical equivalence, which is often taken to be necessary, and sometimes taken to be sufficient, for theoretical equivalence; and “interpretational” equivalence, which is the idea that two theories are equivalent just in case they have the same interpretation. It also includes a discussion of several formal notions of equivalence that have been considered in the recent philosophical literature, including (generalized) definitional (...)
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  • Theoretical Equivalence in Physics.James Owen Weatherall - unknown
    I review the philosophical literature on the question of when two physical theories are equivalent. This includes a discussion of empirical equivalence, which is often taken to be necessary, and sometimes taken to be sufficient, for theoretical equivalence; and "interpretational" equivalence, which is the idea that two theories are equivalent just in case they have the same interpretation. It also includes a discussion of several formal notions of equivalence that have been considered in the recent philosophical literature, including definitional equivalence (...)
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  • (1 other version)Teaching & Learning Guide for: Duality and Ontology.Baptiste Le Bihan & James Read - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (12):e12555.
    Dualities are a pervasive phenomenon in contemporary physics, in which two physical theories are empirically equivalent, yet prima facie make different ontological claims about the world (potentially very different claims—differing in e.g. the number and radius of dimensions of the universe). Dualities thus present a particular instantiation of the well-known notion of underdetermination of theory by evidence. Many different philosophical proposals have been made for how such putative underdetermination might be resolved—this continues to be a programme of active research.
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  • Defining a crisis: the roles of principles in the search for a theory of quantum gravity.Karen Crowther - 2021 - Synthese 198 (Suppl 14):3489-3516.
    In times of crisis, when current theories are revealed as inadequate to task, and new physics is thought to be required—physics turns to re-evaluate its principles, and to seek new ones. This paper explores the various types, and roles of principles that feature in the problem of quantum gravity as a current crisis in physics. I illustrate the diversity of the principles being appealed to, and show that principles serve in a variety of roles in all stages of the crisis, (...)
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  • (1 other version)Duality and ontology.Baptiste Le Bihan & James Read - 2018 - Philosophy Compass 13 (12):e12555.
    A ‘duality’ is a formal mapping between the spaces of solutions of two empirically equivalent theories. In recent times, dualities have been found to be pervasive in string theory and quantum field theory. Naïvely interpreted, duality-related theories appear to make very different ontological claims about the world—differing in e.g. space-time structure, fundamental ontology, and mereological structure. In light of this, duality-related theories raise questions familiar from discussions of underdetermination in the philosophy of science: in the presence of dual theories, what (...)
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  • On "non-empirical confirmation" of string theory.Francois-Igor Pris - 2018 - Philosophy of Science (Философия Науки) 2:78-94.
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  • Fundamentality.Steven French - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge. pp. 679-688.
    The idea that there is some fundamental “level” or “ground” where our description of the world bottoms out has acquired the status of ‘the received view’ in metaphysics ; for a more recent critical defense, see Cameron, 2008). Typically this view is cashed out in terms of some set of ‘basic building blocks’ populating this level, which sits at the bottom of a hierarchy ordered according to some set of compositional principles. These fundamental building blocks are thus taken to have (...)
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  • Sophistry about symmetries?Niels C. M. Martens & James Read - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):315-344.
    A common adage runs that, given a theory manifesting symmetries, the syntax of that theory should be modified in order to construct a new theory, from which symmetry-variant structure of the original theory has been excised. Call this strategy for explicating the underlying ontology of symmetry-related models reduction. Recently, Dewar has proposed an alternative to reduction as a means of articulating the ontology of symmetry-related models—what he calls sophistication, in which the semantics of the original theory is modified, and symmetry-related (...)
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  • On Dualities and Equivalences Between Physical Theories.Jeremy Butterfield - 2021 - In Christian Wüthrich, Baptiste Le Bihan & Nick Huggett (eds.), Philosophy Beyond Spacetime: Implications From Quantum Gravity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    The main aim of this paper is to make a remark about the relation between dualities between theories, as `duality' is understood in physics and equivalence of theories, as `equivalence' is understood in logic and philosophy. The remark is that in physics, two theories can be dual, and accordingly get called `the same theory', though we interpret them as disagreeing---so that they are certainly not equivalent, as `equivalent' is normally understood. So the remark is simple: but, I shall argue, worth (...)
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  • Duality, Fundamentality, and Emergence.Elena Castellani & Sebastian De Haro - unknown
    We argue that dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality, levels, and emergence. Namely, dualities often relate two theories whose hierarchies of levels are inverted relative to each other, and so allow for new fundamentality relations, as well as for epistemic emergence. We find that the direction of emergence typically found in these cases is opposite to the direction of emergence followed in the standard accounts. Namely, the standard emergence direction is that of decreasing fundamentality: there is emergence of less (...)
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  • Spacetime and Physical Equivalence.Sebastian De Haro - unknown
    In this essay I begin to lay out a conceptual scheme for: analysing dualities as cases of theoretical equivalence; assessing when cases of theoretical equivalence are also cases of physical equivalence. The scheme is applied to gauge/gravity dualities. I expound what I argue to be their contribution to questions about: the nature of spacetime in quantum gravity; broader philosophical and physical discussions of spacetime. - proceed by analysing duality through four contrasts. A duality will be a suitable isomorphism between models: (...)
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  • Comparing dualities and gauge symmetries.Sebastian De Haro, Nicholas Teh & Jeremy N. Butterfield - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 59:68-80.
    We discuss some aspects of the relation between dualities and gauge symmetries. Both of these ideas are of course multi-faceted, and we confine ourselves to making two points. Both points are about dualities in string theory, and both have the ‘flavour’ that two dual theories are ‘closer in content’ than you might think. For both points, we adopt a simple conception of a duality as an ‘isomorphism’ between theories: more precisely, as appropriate bijections between the two theories’ sets of states (...)
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  • Equivalence and Duality in Electromagnetism.James Owen Weatherall - 2020 - Philosophy of Science 87 (5):1172-1183.
    In this article I bring the recent philosophical literature on theoretical equivalence to bear on dualities in physics. Focusing on electromagnetic duality, which is a simple example of S-duality i...
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  • An invitation to approximate symmetry, with three applications to intertheoretic relations.Samuel C. Fletcher - 2019 - Synthese 198 (5):4811-4831.
    Merely approximate symmetry is mundane enough in physics that one rarely finds any explication of it. Among philosophers it has also received scant attention compared to exact symmetries. Herein I invite further consideration of this concept that is so essential to the practice of physics and interpretation of physical theory. After motivating why it deserves such scrutiny, I propose a minimal definition of approximate symmetry—that is, one that presupposes as little structure on a physical theory to which it is applied (...)
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  • Motivating dualities.James Read & Thomas Møller-Nielsen - 2020 - Synthese 197 (1):263-291.
    There exists a common view that for theories related by a ‘duality’, dual models typically may be taken ab initio to represent the same physical state of affairs, i.e. to correspond to the same possible world. We question this view, by drawing a parallel with the distinction between ‘interpretational’ and ‘motivational’ approaches to symmetries.
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  • String dualities and empirical equivalence.Richard Dawid - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 59:21-29.
    String dualities establish empirical equivalence between theories that often look entirely different with respect to their basic ontology and physical structure. Therefore, they represent a particularly interesting example of empirical equivalence in physics. However, the status of duality relations in string physics differs substantially from the traditional understanding of the role played by empirical equivalence. The paper specifies three important differences and argues that they are related to a substantially altered view on the underdetermination of theory building.
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  • Chronical Incompleteness, Final Theory Claims, and the Lack of Free Parameters in String Theory.Richard Dawid - 2020 - In Nick Huggett, Keizo Matsubara & Christian Wüthrich (eds.), Beyond Spacetime: The Foundations of Quantum Gravity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.. pp. 237-256.
    String theory has not even come close to a complete formulation after half a century of intense research. On the other hand, a number of features of the theory suggest that the theory, once completed, may be a final theory. It is argued in this chapter that those two conspicuous characteristics of string physics are related to each other. What links them together is the fact that string theory has no dimensionless free parameters at a fundamental level. The paper analyses (...)
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  • Spacetime in String Theory: A Conceptual Clarification.Keizo Matsubara & Lars-Göran Johansson - 2018 - Journal for General Philosophy of Science / Zeitschrift für Allgemeine Wissenschaftstheorie 49 (3):333-353.
    In this paper, some conceptual issues are addressed in order to make sense of what string theory is supposed to tell us about spacetime. The dualities in string theory are used as a starting point for our argumentation. We explore the consequences of a standard view towards these dualities, namely that the dual descriptions represent the same physical situation. Given this view, one has to understand string theory in a manner such that what counts as physical spacetime is based only (...)
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  • Holography, application, and string theory's changing nature.Lauren Greenspan - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94 (C):72-86.
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  • Scientific Realism and High Energy Physics.Richard Dawid - 2017 - In Juha Saatsi (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism. New York: Routledge. pp. 279-290.
    The paper discusses major implications of high energy physics for the scientific realism debate. The first part analyses the ways in which aspects of the empirically well-confirmed standard model of particle physics are relevant for a reassessment of entity realism, ontological realism and structural realism. The second part looks at the implications of more far-reaching concepts like string theory. While those theories have not found empirical confirmation, if they turned out viable, their implications for the realism debate would be more (...)
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  • Conceptual Aspects of Gauge/Gravity Duality.Sebastian De Haro, Daniel R. Mayerson & Jeremy N. Butterfield - 2016 - Foundations of Physics 46 (11):1381-1425.
    We give an introductory review of gauge/gravity duality, and associated ideas of holography, emphasising the conceptual aspects. The opening sections gather the ingredients, viz. anti-de Sitter spacetime, conformal field theory and string theory, that we need for presenting, in Sect. 5, the central and original example: Maldacena’s AdS/CFT correspondence. Sections 6 and 7 develop the ideas of this example, also in applications to condensed matter systems, QCD, and hydrodynamics. Sections 8 and 9 discuss the possible extensions of holographic ideas to (...)
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  • Relativities of fundamentality.Kerry McKenzie - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 59:89-99.
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  • On the Relation between Dualities and Gauge Symmetries.Sebastian de Haro, Nicholas Teh & Jeremy Butterfield - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):1059-1069.
    We make two points about dualities in string theory. The first point is that the conception of duality, which we will discuss, meshes with two dual theories being ‘gauge related’ in the general philosophical sense of being physically equivalent. The second point is a result about gauge/gravity duality that shows its relation to gauge symmetries to be subtler than one might expect: each of a certain class of gauge symmetries in the gravity theory, that is, diffeomorphisms, is related to a (...)
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