Michela Massimi, Review of Representing Electrons (original) (raw)
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Miles MacLeod, Review of Representing Electrons
One of the major trends in the debate over the existence of the unobservable entities employed theoretically by science for the last 10 years or so (the so-called 'realism debate'), has been a realization that the matter can no longer be settled on basis of broad general statements about the reality or otherwise of entities hypothesised by successful theories, but must be judged independently on a case by case basis, with careful examination of the history of their theoretical representations. Theo Arabatzis' Representing Electrons is another step in this direction, 1 and for the realist, a positive one. While still committed to his largely agnostic viewpoint as far as this debate is concerned, Arabatzis thinks nonetheless that the electron's representation from 1897 to 1925 experienced sufficient permanence in the experimental setups assigned to it, to at least give us license to believe that scientists were referring to the same 'thing'. There are hints enough here that Arabatzis has a rather new theory of reference to put forward, centred on experimentation rather than theoretical descriptions. More of this however in a moment! Realism is only one item on the Arabatzis' list of considerations in this multifarious work, which is keen to find sure ground methodolo-gically before launching off on its main task, a history of the electron. He ranges thus over a large collection of historiographical and philosophical topics, all given application in case of the electron's representation. By way of challenge to the more popular viewpoint, he disputes that there could be said to be a singular discovery event as far as an unobservable entity is concerned. The electron itself was not so much discovered, as accepted through a combination of the work by Lorentz, Larmor and Thompson, all producing results which pointed to the same entity being involved in each of the differing experimental situations. Its broad applicability made the electron all but indispensable for the practice of physicists concerned with electromagnetic theory. This result was a rather rapid general acceptance of it. The chief consideration for Arabatzis however is the promotion of a new method for understanding the process by which the representation of an entity is developed and revised; one which takes its cue from the quite frequent lack of control any one scientist has over the direction a representation takes, and the sometimes active sense with which a representation resists being bent to any particular design. This almost animated nature ARTICLE IN PRESS 1 To quote him, ''the histories of scientific concepts can play a seminal role in evaluating the tenability of a realist attitude toward the corresponding entities'' (p. 258).
Scientific realism, the Galilean strategy, and representation
2011
Abstract: This paper critically reviews Philip Kitcher's most recent epistemology of science, real realism. I argue that this view is unstable under different understandings of the term'representation', and that the arguments offered for the position are either unsound or invalid depending on the understanding employed. Suitably modified those arguments are however convincing in favor of a deflationary version of real realism, which I refer to as the bare view.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 2008
The late 19th century debate among German-speaking physicists about theoretical entities is often regarded as foreshadowing the scientific realism debate. This paper brings out differences between them by concentrating on the part of the earlier debate that was concerned with the conceptual consistency of the competing conceptions of matter—mainly, but not exclusively, of atomism. Philosophical antinomies of atomism were taken up by Emil Du Bois-Reymond in an influential lecture in 1872. Such challenges to the consistency of atomism had repercussions within the physics community, as can be shown for the examples of Heinrich Hertz and Ludwig Boltzmann. The latter developed a series of counter-arguments, culminating in an ingenious attempt to turn the tables on the critics of atomism and prove the inconsistency of non-atomistic conceptions of nature. Underlying this controversy is a disagreement over specific goals of physical research which was considered crucially relevant to the further course of physical inquiry. It thereby exemplifies an attitude towards the realism issue that can be contrasted with a different, more neutral attitude of construing the realism issue as merely philosophical and indifferent with respect to concrete research programs in physics, which one also occasionally finds expressed in the 19th century controversy and which may be seen as the prevailing attitude of the 20th century debate.
The Emergence of Theoretical Physics in the Second Half of the Nineteenth Century
Natural Sciences and Human Thought, 1995
The relationship between natural sciences and human thought has long been at the centre of philosophical debate and has of course been the subject of a variety of interpretations. Beginning in the middle of last century developments in scientific disciplines accelerated the dissolution of the idealist and positivist synthesis and opened the way for a (partially) new role for philosophy: the critical analysis of the results and the methodologies of science. In this century neo-Kantian discussions about the conditions determining the possibility of scientific knowledge, the neopositivist analysis of scientific theories, phenomenological attempts to achieve a closer grasp of reality, sociological emphasis on the role of shared values, and linguistic explanations have shared the stage to various degrees. In addition, far-reaching criticism of the general scientific approach to knowledge and of its technological implications has stressed the limits not only of the scientific concept of truth but also, and more radically, the possibility of the subject's access to "rational" knowledge free of historically determined values, interests, emotions, and feelings. From this point of view man's very nature precludes the possibility of critical enquiry based on rational criteria of extratemporal validity. Controversial postmodernist trends stress differences rather than unity and localize and relativize values and meanings. There is a widespread belief that "the positive knowledge of science may not ultimately be for the best, as the downside of scientifically produced military and industrial technics becomes quite unavoidably apparent" [1]. All these philosophical trends have had an influence on history, philosophy, and sociology of science. Historiography, still based on a linear, cumulative, positivist approach at the beginning of the century, shifted in the 1960s toward more sophisticated rational reconstructions in the form of the dynamics of research programs, only to be challenged by intellectual history and the history of ideas, on the one hand and by the sociology of institutions and, more recently, the sociology of knowledge, on the other. New cultural, anthropological, archaeological, and "gender" studies are coming forward, while textual analysis
Thoughts, arguments and references
The purpose of this work is to examine the use of different arguments in physical theories and analyze the way that these arguments are transformed to judgments. This however presupposes to define firstly the criteria for logical and empirical approach in science. These criteria create the framework that a certain judgments will take place in order to built and support a distinguished scientific theory. As an example we had been used the theory of quantum mechanics (QM) in order to judge the logical and empirical statements that are used by this theory. There is no doubt that QM is a well established theory, however it carries contradictions that are not possible to overcome with logical propositions. We analyze and make clear these contradictions in order to achieve a better understanding of structure of QM theory until today.