This classic work in the philosophy of physical science is an incisive and readable account of the scientific method. Pierre Duhem was one of the great figures in French science, a devoted teacher, and a distinguished scholar of the history and philosophy of science. This book represents his most mature thought on a wide range of topics.

Quantum field theory (QFT) combines quantum mechanics with Einstein's special theory of relativity and underlies elementary particle physics. This book presents a philosophical analysis of QFT. It is the first treatise in which the philosophies of space-time, quantum phenomena, and particle interactions are encompassed in a unified framework. Describing the physics in nontechnical terms, and schematically illustrating complex ideas, the book also serves as an introduction to fundamental physical theories. The philosophical interpretation both upholds the reality of the quantum world (...) and acknowledges the irreducible cognitive elements in its representation. The interpretation is based on an analysis of our ways of thinking as the are embedded in the logical structure of QFT. The author argues that philosophical categories are significant only if they play active and essential roles in our knowledge and hence constitute part of the theories in actual use. Thus she regards physical theories as primary, extracts their categorical structure, and uses it to rethink key philosophical questions. Among the questions this book tries to answer are: What are the quantum properties independent of measurements? How do we refer to individual things in a continuous field? How do theories relate to objects? What are the general conditions of the world and of our ways of thinking that make possible our knowledge of the microscopic realm, which is so intangible and counterintuitive? As a penetrating analysis of vital themes in contemporary science, the book will engage the interest of students and professionals in physics and philosophy alike. (shrink)

In this sequence of philosophical essays about natural science, the author argues that fundamental explanatory laws, the deepest and most admired successes of modern physics, do not in fact describe regularities that exist in nature. Cartwright draws from many real-life examples to propound a novel distinction: that theoretical entities, and the complex and localized laws that describe them, can be interpreted realistically, but the simple unifying laws of basic theory cannot.

Philosophers of quantum mechanics have generally addressed exceedingly simple systems. Laura Ruetsche offers a much-needed study of the interpretation of more complicated systems, and an underexplored family of physical theories, such as quantum field theory and quantum statistical mechanics, showing why they repay philosophical attention. She guides those familiar with the philosophy of ordinary QM into the philosophy of 'QM infinity', by presenting accessible introductions to relevant technical notions and the foundational questions they frame--and then develops and defends answers to (...) some of those questions. Finally, Ruetsche highlights ties between the foundational investigation of QM infinity and philosophy more broadly construed, in particular by using the interpretive problems discussed to motivate new ways to think about the nature of physical possibility and the problem of scientific realism. (shrink)

What role have experiments played, and should they play, in physics? How does one come to believe rationally in experimental results? The Neglect of Experiment attempts to provide answers to both of these questions. Professor Franklin's approach combines the detailed study of four episodes in the history of twentieth century physics with an examination of some of the philosophical issues involved. The episodes are the discovery of parity nonconservation in the 1950s; the nondiscovery of parity nonconservation in the 1930s, when (...) the results of experiments indicated, at least in retrospect, the symmetry violation, but the significance of those results was not realized; the discovery and acceptance of CP symmetry; and Millikan's oil-drop experiment. Franklin examines the various roles that experiment plays, including its role in deciding between competing theories, confirming theories, and calling fo new theories. The author argues that one can provide a philosophical justification for these roles. He contends that if experiment plays such important roles, then one must have good reason to believe in experimental results. He then deals with deveral problems concerning such reslults, including the epistemology of experiment, how one comes to believe rationally in experimental results, the question of the influence of theoretical presuppositions on results, and the problem of scientific fruad. This original and important contribution to the study of the philosophy of experimental science is an outgrowth of many years of research. Franklin brings to this work more than a decade of experience as an experimental high-energy physicist, along with his significant contributions to the history and philosophy of science. (shrink)

This is one of the most important books on quantum mechanics to have appeared in recent years. It offers a dramatically new interpretation that resolves puzzles and paradoxes associated with the measurement problem and the behavior of coupled systems. A crucial feature of this interpretation is that a quantum mechanical measurement can be certain to have a particular outcome even when the observed system fails to have the property corresponding to that outcome just prior to the measurement interaction.

This 1983 book is a lively and clearly written introduction to the philosophy of natural science, organized around the central theme of scientific realism. It has two parts. 'Representing' deals with the different philosophical accounts of scientific objectivity and the reality of scientific entities. The views of Kuhn, Feyerabend, Lakatos, Putnam, van Fraassen, and others, are all considered. 'Intervening' presents the first sustained treatment of experimental science for many years and uses it to give a new direction to debates about (...) realism. Hacking illustrates how experimentation often has a life independent of theory. He argues that although the philosophical problems of scientific realism can not be resolved when put in terms of theory alone, a sound philosophy of experiment provides compelling grounds for a realistic attitude. A great many scientific examples are described in both parts of the book, which also includes lucid expositions of recent high energy physics and a remarkable chapter on the microscope in cell biology. (shrink)

The influential Berkeley theoretical physicist Geoffrey Chew renounced the reigning approach to the study of subatomic particles in the early 1960s. The standard approach relied on a rigid division between elementary and composite particles. Partly on the basis of his new interpretation of Feynman diagrams, Chew called instead for a “nuclear democracy” that would erase this division, treating all nuclear particles on an equal footing. In developing his rival approach, which came to dominate studies of the strong nuclear force throughout (...) the 1960s, Chew drew on intellectual resources culled from his own political activities and his attempts to reform how graduate students in physics would be trained. (shrink)

Quantum mechanics is a subject that has captured the imagination of a surprisingly broad range of thinkers, including many philosophers of science. Quantum field theory, however, is a subject that has been discussed mostly by physicists. This is the first book to present quantum field theory in a manner that makes it accessible to philosophers. Because it presents a lucid view of the theory and debates that surround the theory, An Interpretive Introduction to Quantum Field Theory will interest students of (...) physics as well as students of philosophy. -/- Paul Teller presents the basic ideas of quantum field theory in a way that is understandable to readers who are familiar with non-relativistic quantum mechanics. He provides information about the physics of the theory without calculational detail, and he enlightens readers on how to think about the theory physically. Along the way, he dismantles some popular myths and clarifies the novel ways in which quantum field theory is both a theory about fields and about particles. His goal is to raise questions about the philosophical implications of the theory and to offer some tentative interpretive views of his own. This provocative and thoughtful book challenges philosophers to extend their thinking beyond the realm of quantum mechanics and it challenges physicists to consider the philosophical issues that their explorations have encouraged. (shrink)

Presents a guide to the basics of quantum mechanics and measurement.

Science as Practice and Culture explores one of the newest and most controversial developments within the rapidly changing field of science studies: the move toward studying scientific practice--the work of doing science--and the associated move toward studying scientific culture, understood as the field of resources that practice operates in and on. Andrew Pickering has invited leading historians, philosophers, sociologists, and anthropologists of science to prepare original essays for this volume. The essays range over the physical and biological sciences and mathematics, (...) and are divided into two parts. In part I, the contributors map out a coherent set of perspectives on scientific practice and culture, and relate their analyses to central topics in the philosophy of science such as realism, relativism, and incommensurability. The essays in part II seek to delineate the study of science as practice in arguments across its borders with the sociology of scientific knowledge, social epistemology, and reflexive ethnography. (shrink)

Philosophers of experiment have acknowledged that experiments are often more than mere hypothesis-tests, once thought to be an experiment's exclusive calling. Drawing on examples from contemporary biology, I make an additional amendment to our understanding of experiment by examining the way that `wide' instrumentation can, for reasons of efficiency, lead scientists away from traditional hypothesis-directed methods of experimentation and towards exploratory methods.

Starting with some illustrative examples, I develop a systematic account of a specific type of experimentation--an experimentation which is not, as in the "standard view", driven by specific theories. It is typically practiced in periods in which no theory or--even more fundamentally--no conceptual framework is readily available. I call it exploratory experimentation and I explicate its systematic guidelines. From the historical examples I argue furthermore that exploratory experimentation may have an immense, but hitherto widely neglected, epistemic significance.

The paper is concerned with explaining some of the principal theoretical developments in elementary particle physics and discussing the associated methodological problems both in respect of heuristics and appraisal. Particular reference is made to relativistic quantum field theory, renormalization, Feynman diagram techniques, the analytic S-matrix and the Chew — Frautschi bootstrap.

The metaphysical commitments of quantum field theory are examined. A thesis of underdetermination as between field and particle approaches to the "elementary particles" is argued for but only if a disputed notion of transcendental individuality is admitted. The superiority of the field approach is further emphasized in the context of heuristics.

Exploratory experimentation and high-throughput molecular biology appear to have considerable affinity for each other. Included in the latter category is metagenomics, which is the DNA-based study of diverse microbial communities from a vast range of non-laboratory environments. Metagenomics has already made numerous discoveries and these have led to reinterpretations of fundamental concepts of microbial organization, evolution, and ecology. The most outstanding success story of metagenomics to date involves the discovery of a rhodopsin gene, named proteorhodopsin, in marine bacteria that were (...) never suspected to have any photobiological capacities. A discussion of this finding and its detailed investigation illuminates the relationship between exploratory experimentation and metagenomics. Specifically, the proteorhodopsin story indicates that a dichotomous interpretation of theory-driven and exploratory experimentation is insufficient and that an interactive understanding of these two types of experimentation can be usefully supplemented by another category, "natural history experimentation". Further reflection on the context of metagenomics suggests the necessity of thinking more historically about exploratory and other forms of experimentation. (shrink)

My aim in this article is to introduce readers to the topic of exploratory experimentation and briefly explain how the three articles that follow, by Richard Burian, Kevin Elliott, and Maureen O'Malley, advance our understanding of the nature and significance of exploratory research. I suggest that the distinction between exploratory and theory-driven experimentation is multidimensional and that some of the dimensions are continuums. I point out that exploratory experiments are typically theory-informed even if they are not theory-driven. I also distinguish (...) between research programs and experiments. Research programs that are largely exploratory, such as the ones discussed in these case studies, can involve both exploratory and theory-driven experimentation. (shrink)

There has been relatively little effort to provide a systematic overview of different forms of exploratory experimentation (EE). The present paper examines the growing subdiscipline of nanotoxicology and suggests that it illustrates at least four ways that researchers can engage in EE: searching for regularities; developing new techniques, simulation models, and instrumentation; collecting and analyzing large swaths of data using new experimental strategies (e.g., computer-based simulation and "high-throughput" instrumentation); and structuring an entire disciplinary field around exploratory research agendas. In order (...) to distinguish these and other activities more effectively, the paper proposes a taxonomy that includes three dimensions along which types of EE vary: (1) the aim of the experimental activity, (2) the role of theory in the activity, and (3) the methods or strategies employed for varying experimental parameters. (shrink)

This article explores Michael Faraday’s “Historical Sketch of Electro‐Magnetism” as a fruitful source for understanding the epistemic significance of experimentation. In this work Faraday provides a catalog of the numerous experimental and theoretical developments in the early history of electromagnetism. He also describes methods that enable experimentalists to dissociate experimental results from the theoretical commitments generating their research. An analysis of the methods articulated in this sketch is instructive for confronting epistemological worries about the theory‐dependence of experimentation. †To contact the (...) author, please write to: 10289 Saint Katherine Lane, Saint Ann, MO 63074; e‐mail: [email protected]. (shrink)

The idea that the use of instruments in science is theory‐dependent seems to threaten the extent to which the output of those instruments can act as an independent arbiter of theory. This issue is explored by studying an early use of the electron microscope to observe dislocations in crystals. It is shown that this usage did indeed involve the theory of the electron microscope but that, nevertheless, it was possible to argue strongly for the experimental results, the theory of dislocations (...) being tested, and the theory of the instrument, all at the same time. (shrink)

From reviews of the hardback edition: a deep study of 20th century field ... of the conceptual origins and development of twentieth century field theories, ...

This paper explores various functions of idealizations in quantum field theory. To this end it is important to first distinguish between different kinds of theories and models of or inspired by quantum field theory. Idealizations have pragmatic and cognitive functions. Analyzing a case-study from hadron physics, I demonstrate the virtues of studying highly idealized models for exploring the features of theories with an extremely rich structure such as quantum field theory and for gaining some understanding of the physical processes in (...) the system under consideration. (shrink)

In Experiment, Right or Wrong, Allan Franklin continues his investigation of the history and philosophy of experiment presented in his previous book, The Neglect of Experiment. Using a combination of case studies and philosophical readings of those studies, Franklin again addresses two important questions: (1) What role does and should experiment play in the choice between competing theories and in the confirmation or refutation of theories and hypotheses? (2) How do we come to believe reasonably in experimental results? Experiment, Right (...) or Wrong makes a significant contribution to an important area in contemporary history and philosophy of science. Philosophers and historians of science, physicists, and advanced students in these areas will find much of interest in this engaging study. (shrink)

Engages with the impact of modern technology on experimental physicists. This study reveals how the increasing scale and complexity of apparatus has distanced physicists from the very science which drew them into experimenting, and has fragmented microphysics into different technical traditions.

Fundamental theories are hard to come by. But even if we had them, they would be too complicated to apply. Quantum chromodynamics is a case in point. This theory is supposed to govern all strong interactions, but it is extremely hard to apply and test at energies where protons, neutrons and ions are the effective degrees of freedom. Instead, scientists typically use highly idealized models such as the MIT Bag Model or the Nambu Jona-Lasinio Model to account for phenomena in (...) this domain, to explain them and to gain nderstanding. Based on these models, which typically isolate a single feature of QCD and disregard many others, scientists attempt to get a better understanding of the physics of strong interactions. But does this practice make sense? Is it justified to use these models for the purposes at hand? Interestingly, these models do not even provide an accurate description of the mass spectrum of protons, neutrons and pions and their lowest lying excitations well - despite several adjustable parameters. And yet, the models are heavily used. I'll argue that a qualitative story, which establishes an explanatory link between the fundamental theory and a model, plays an important role in model acceptance in these cases. (shrink)

This paper is devoted to an examination of the discovery, characterization, and analysis of the functions of microRNAs, which also serves as a vehicle for demonstrating the importance of exploratory experimentation in current (post-genomic) molecular biology. The material on microRNAs is important in its own right: it provides important insight into the extreme complexity of regulatory networks involving components made of DNA, RNA, and protein. These networks play a central role in regulating development of multicellular organisms and illustrate the importance (...) of epigenetic as well as genetic systems in evolution and development. The examination of these matters yields principled arguments for the historicity of the functions of key biological molecules and for the indispensability of exploratory experimentation in contemporary molecular biology as well as some insight into the complex interplay between exploratory experimentation and hypothesis-driven science. This latter result is not only important for philosophy of science, but also of practical importance for the evaluation of grant proposals, although the elaboration of this latter claim must be left for another occasion. (shrink)

: The increasing attention on experiment in the last two decades has led to important insights into its material, cultural and social dimensions. However, the role of experiment as a tool for generating knowledge has been comparatively poorly studied. What questions are asked in experimental research? How are they treated and eventually resolved? And how do questions, epistemic situations, and experimental activity cohere and shape each other? In my paper, I treat these problems on the basis of detailed studies of (...) research practice. After presenting several cases from the history of electricity—Dufay, Ampère, and Faraday—I discuss a specific type of experiment—the "exploratory experiment"—and analyze how it works in concept formation. I argue that a fuller understanding of experiment can only be achieved by intertwining historical and philosophical perspectives in such a way that the very separation of the two become questioable. (shrink)