Are the laws of physics ‘economical with the truth’?

It has been argued that the fundamental laws of physics are deceitful in that they give the impression of greater unity and coherence in our theories than is actually found to be the case. Causal stories and phenomenological relationships are claimed to provide a more acceptable account of the world, and only theoretical entities — not laws — are considered as perhaps corresponding to real features of the world.This paper examines these claims in the light of the author's own field of research: high energy physics. Some of the distinctions upon which the above conclusions are based are found not to be tenable in practice. Examples from experimental particle physics are presented which suggest an important role of the underlying theoretical structure which cannot be overlooked. It is argued that the fundamental theories must, in fact, be treated as being as worthy or unworthy of ontological commitment as the entities they postulate or the phenomenological relationships they inspire. Whilst it is conceded that aspects of the current theoretical formalism belie literal interpretation, it is maintained that revision in these particular areas need not affect the symmetry principles, particle spectra, or coupling strengths that largely determine the empirical content of the theory.Various other reasons for believing that the laws of physics may be dishonest are examined and in particular attention is drawn to the current tendency in particle physics to judge a theory's merits by aesthetic criteria. The difficulty of providing a sound justification for this behaviour does lead to the suspicion that our abstract representation of the world may in fact be coloured by anthropomorphic prejudices. The question then remains as to whether this merely points to a certain embellishment of the truth or the masquerading of a lie.I would like to thank my colleagues in high energy physics for their comments on this paper, and I am also particularly indebted to members of the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University for many fruitful discussions on these and related topics. I have benefitted over many years from stimulating philosophical arguments with my friend Alan Birchall, of the NRPB. I would like to dedicate this paper to the memory of John Bell, who had arranged to meet with me at CERN to discuss some of these topics shortly before his tragic death. He was an inspiration to many of us in high energy physics, with interests in the wider issues raised by our subject, and he will be greatly missed.     

Causal Warrant for Realism about Particle Physics

While scientific realism generally assumes that successful scientific explanations yield information about reality, realists also have to admit that not all information acquired in this way is equally well warranted. Some versions of scientific realism do this by saying that explanatory posits with which we have established some kind of causal contact are better warranted than those that merely appear in theoretical hypotheses. I first explicate this distinction by considering some general criteria that permit us to distinguish causal warrant from theoretical warrant. I then apply these criteria to a specific case from particle physics, claiming that scientific realism has to incorporate the distinction between causal and theoretical warrant if it is to be an adequate stance in the philosophy of particle physics.     

Ontic Structuralism and the Symmetries of Particle Physics

According to structural realism, in mature science there is structural continuity along theoretical change. A major counterexample to this thesis is the transition from the Eightfold Way to the Standard Model in particle physics. Nevertheless, the notion of structure is significantly important in comprehending the theoretical picture of particle physics, where particles change and undergo transmutations, while the only thing which remains unchanged is the basic structure, i.e. the symmetry group which controls the transmutations. This kind of view agrees with the paradigmatic case where the structure is an internal symmetry and the instantiations are the elementary particles. The metaphysical view which reflects this situation is a version of ontic structuralism.     

Philosophical perspectives on ad hoc hypotheses and the Higgs mechanism

We examine physicists’ charge of ad hocness against the Higgs mechanism in the standard model of elementary particle physics. We argue that even though this charge never rested on a clear-cut and well-entrenched definition of “ad hoc”, it is based on conceptual and methodological assumptions and principles that are well-founded elements of the scientific practice of high-energy particle physics. We further evaluate the implications of the recent discovery of a Higgs-like particle at the CERN’s Large Hadron Collider for the charge of ad hocness against the Higgs mechanism.     

Unlearning Aristotelian physics: a study of knowledge-based learning

A study of a group of elementary school students learning to control a computer-implemented Newtonian object reveals a surprisingly uniform and detailed collection of strategies, at the core of which is a robust “Aristotelian” expectation that things should move in the direction they are last pushed. A protocol of an undergraduate dealing with the same situation shows a large overlap with the set of strategies used by the elementary school children and thus a marked lack of influence of classroom physics training on this student's naive physics. The data from these two studies are pooled and elaborated into a “genetic task analysis” of how one might come to understand Newtonian dynamics as a more or less natural evolution from the naive state.     

What Is and Why Do We Need Philosophy of Physics?

Philosophy of physics is a small but thriving research field situated at the intersection between the natural sciences and the humanities. However, what exactly distinguishes philosophy of physics from physics is rarely made explicit in much depth. We provide a detailed analysis in the form of eleven theses, delineating both the nature of the questions asked in philosophy of physics and the methodology with which they are addressed.     

Hermann Weyl on Minkowskian Space–Time and Riemannian Geometry

Hermann Weyl as a founding father of field theory in relativistic physics and quantum theory always stressed the internal logic of mathematical and physical theories. In line with his stance in the foundations of mathematics, Weyl advocated a constructivist approach in physics and geometry. An attempt is made here to present a unified picture of Weyl’s conception of space–time theories from Riemann to Minkowski. The emphasis is on the mathematical foundations of physics and the foundational significance of a constructivist philosophical point of view. I conclude with some remarks on Weyl’s broader philosophical views.     

Situated Behavior and the Place of Measurement in Psychological Theory

Measured values of human behavior may entail contradictory attributes of wave and particle by analogy with the wave/particle attributes of the electron. 1/f scaling is the wave attribute in this analogy and punctate data points are the particle attribute. One consequence of the wave/particle duality in physics was to elevate measurement to a primary place in physical theory, and one purpose of the present analogy is to likewise elevate measurement to a primary place in psychological theory. Another purpose is to emulate Robert Shaw's creative use of analogies, consistent with the brief quotation that begins this article.     

Strategies of model-building in condensed matter physics: trade-offs as a demarcation criterion between physics and biology?

This paper contrasts and compares strategies of model-building in condensed matter physics and biology, with respect to their alleged unequal susceptibility to trade-offs between different theoretical desiderata. It challenges the view, often expressed in the philosophical literature on trade-offs in population biology, that the existence of systematic trade-offs is a feature that is specific to biological models, since unlike physics, biology studies evolved systems that exhibit considerable natural variability. By contrast, I argue that the development of ever more sophisticated experimental, theoretical, and computational methods in physics is beginning to erode this contrast, since condensed matter physics is now in a position to measure, describe, model, and manipulate sample-specific features of individual systems—for example at the mesoscopic level—in a way that accounts for their contingency and heterogeneity. Model-building in certain areas of physics thus turns out to be more akin to modeling in biology than has been supposed and, indeed, has traditionally been the case.     

What are the phenomena of physics?

Depending on different positions in the debate on scientific realism, there are various accounts of the phenomena of physics. For scientific realists like Bogen and Woodward, phenomena are matters of fact in nature, i.e., the effects explained and predicted by physical theories. For empiricists like van Fraassen, the phenomena of physics are the appearances observed or perceived by sensory experience. Constructivists, however, regard the phenomena of physics as artificial structures generated by experimental and mathematical methods. My paper investigates the historical background of these different meanings of “phenomenon” in the traditions of physics and philosophy. In particular, I discuss Newton’s account of the phenomena and Bohr’s view of quantum phenomena, their relation to the philosophical discussion, and to data and evidence in current particle physics and quantum optics.     

BIOLOGY AND THE SOCIAL SCIENCES

Abstract. The sciences may be conceptualized as a hierarchy ranked by level of organization (e.g., many-body physics ranks above particle physics). Each science serves as an antidiscipline for the science above it; that is, between each pair, tense but creative interplay is inevitable. Biology has advanced through such tension between its subdisciplines and now can serve as an antidiscipline for the social sciences—for anthropology, for example, by examining the connection between cultural and biological evolution; for psychology, by addressing the nature of learning and the structure of the unconscious; for economics, by examining economically irrational behavior and by comparing economic activity in humans and other species. Sociology, concerned mainly with advanced literate societies, is relatively remote from the genetic basis of human social behavior. However, moving between biological and social levels of organization generates richness and points to new and unexpected principles.     

DEGREES OF FREEDOM AND THE INTERPRETATION OF QUANTUM FIELD THEORY

Nick Huggett and Robert Weingard (1994) have recently proposed a novel approach to interpreting field theories in physics, one which makes central use of the fact that a field generally has an infinite number of degrees of freedom in any finite region of space it occupies. Their characterization, they argue, (i) reproduces our intuitive categorizations of fields in the classical domain and thereby (ii) provides a basis for arguing that the quantum field is a field. Furthermore, (iii) it accomplishes these tasks better than does a well-known rival approach due to Paul Teller (1990, 1995). This paper contends that all three of these claims are mistaken, and suggests that Huggett and Weingard have not shown how counting degrees of freedom provides any insight into the interpretation or the formal properties of field theories in physics.     

Space,time and memory: tales from a long road

Points, lines and surfaces are the basic elements of Euclidean geometry. In this paper, accompanying a keynote at ICSC 2018, we will explore how, in physics, cognition and our lived experience, it is often better to think in terms of interconnected threads than an evolving state of the world now. In physics ‘now’ is an illusion, merely a convenient construction, each particle and person is more like an independent strand in space–time, and similarly, in our minds, strands of memories from different roles and contexts flow almost independently. Paths create lines on the map and may be inscribed as signs in the landscape, but our journeys along paths create temporal threads that interweave as we meet along the way. This paper draws on my research over many years on time and user interaction and also my personal experiences during a thousand-mile walk around the periphery of Wales in 2013.     

The fifth field of Ervin Laszlo

Increasingly gaining the attention of evolution theorists and other scientists is the new quantum‐vacuum‐interactive, or QVI‐field theory of Ervin Laszlo. Among other prospective advancements, this theory would add a fifth primary field to the four already identified by physics to account for the existence of the universe and our lives within it. As the physics and other matters involved make this new theory difficult for those other than physicists to understand, this account is written to provide a guide for the generalist and lay person.     

Three Arguments from Temporary Intrinsics

The Argument from Temporary Intrinsics is one of the canonical arguments against endurantism. I show that the two standard ways of presenting the argument have limited force. I then present a new version of the argument, which provides a more promising articulation of the underlying objection to endurantism. However, the premises of this argument conflict with the gauge theories of particle physics, and so this version of the argument is no more successful than its predecessors. I conclude that no version of the Argument from Temporary Intrinsics gives us a compelling reason to favor one theory of persistence over another.     

Goals and Learning in Microworlds

We explored the consequences for learning through interaction with an educational microworld called Electric Field Hockey (EFH). Like many microworlds, EFH is intended to help students develop a qualitative understanding of the target domain, in this case, the physics of electrical interactions. Through the development and use of a computer model that learns to play EFH, we analyzed the knowledge the model acquired as it applied the game-oriented strategies we observed physics students using. Through learning-by-doing on the standard sequence of tasks, the model substantially improved its EFH playing ability; however, it did so without acquiring any new qualitative physics knowledge. This surprising result led to an experiment that compared students' use of EFH with standard-goal tasks against two alternative instructional conditions, specific-path and no-goal, each justified from a different learning theory. Students in the standard-goal condition learned less qualitative physics than did those in the two alternative conditions, which was consistent with the model. The implication for instructional practice is that careful selection and analysis of the tasks that frame microworld use is essential if these programs are to lead to the learning outcomes imagined for them. Theoretically, these results suggest a new interpretation for numerous empirical findings on the effectiveness of no-goal instructional tasks. The standing “reduced cognitive load” interpretation is contradicted by the success of the specific-path condition, and we offer an alternative knowledge-dependent interpretation.     

Beyond opposites: Extending the cultural boundaries of CBT methodology

In cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), a black or white perception of the world is generally considered to be a distortion of reality. This paper addresses the issue of bipolar or categorical thinking and its role in creating disturbance. It introduces a new quantitative methodology known as fuzzy logic (FL) and shows its potential in developing new effective CBT strategies to address bipolar thinking. The paper maintains that the roots of such thinking can be traced back to the Aristotelian logic which posits a 'black or white' view of the world. It is argued that a bipolar perspective is no longer defendable given recent developments in the field of literature, physics and logic. Moreover CBT can derive significant benefits by embracing the fuzzy logic paradigm. In particular it can, first, benefit by improving the degree of precision of its diagnostic tools and, second, by applying the FL principles to derive alternative strategies for inducing healthy changes in clients. Such improvements are believed to enhance CBT profile in terms of the degree of realism, flexibility and efficiency of its methods. The illustrations offered throughout this paper are based on the two main CBT perspectives; rational emotive behaviour therapy (REBT) and cognitive therapy (CT).