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"Ruetsche, Laura"
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The perils of approximate ontology
The mathematical centerpiece of many physical theories is a Lagrangian. So let’s imagine that there’s some Lagrangian we trust. Should that induce us to endorse an ontology? If so, what ontology, and how is it related to our trustworthy Lagrangian? I’ll examine these questions in the context of quantum field theoretic Lagrangians. When these Lagrangians are understood as “merely effective,” a variety of approximations figure in the physics they frame. So do distinctive grounds for trusting those Lagrangians, grounds recent literature has adduced in support of a novel variety of scientific realism known as
Effective Realism
. This essay attempts to undermine those grounds, and to do so without presupposing extensive prior knowledge of quantum field theories.
Journal Article
The miracles argument meets quantum mechanics
It’s a mistake to afflict upon on our best theories a single, uniform interpretation meant to apply in all circumstance. It’s a mistake because it impedes the capacity of those theories to function as science. To refrain from the mistake is to adopt the locavore hypothesis: the same theory can merit different interpretations in different circumstances. Using quantum mechanics as an example, I argue for the locavore hypothesis, and examine its consequences not only for the scientific realism debate but also for our notion of scientific understanding.
Es un error imponer a nuestras mejores teorías una interpretación única y uniforme, que deba ser aplicada en toda circunstancia. Es un error porque socava la capacidad de esas teorías de funcionar como ciencia. Evitar este error supone adoptar la hipótesis locávora: la misma teoría puede recibir interpretaciones diferentes en diferentes circunstancias. Recurriendo a la mecánica cuántica como ejemplo, defiendo la hipótesis locavore, y examino sus consecuencias no solo para el debate sobre realismo científico, sino también para nuestra noción de comprensión científica.
Journal Article
Renormalization Group Realism
One realist response to the pessimistic meta-induction distinguishes idle theoretical wheels from aspects of successful theories we can expect to persist and espouses realism about the latter. Implementing the response requires a strategy for identifying the distinguished aspects. The strategy I will call renormalization group realism has the virtue of directly engaging the gears of our best current physics—perturbative quantum field theories. I argue that the strategy, rather than disarming the skeptical possibilities evinced by the pessimistic meta-induction, forces them to retreat a level. I also suggest that those skeptical possibilities continue to carry force.
Journal Article
The Shaky Game +25, or: on locavoracity
Taking Arthur Fine's The Shaky Game as my inspiration, and the recent 25th anniversary of the publication of that work as the occasion to exercise that inspiration, I sketch an alternative to the \"Naturalism\" prevalent among philosophers of physics. Naturalism is a methodology eventuating in a metaphysics. The methodology is to seek the deep framework assumptions that make the best sense of science; the metaphysics is furnished by those assumptions and supported by their own support of science. The alternative presented here, which I call \"Locavoracity,\" shares Naturalism's commitment to making sense of science, but alters Naturalism's methodology. The Locavore's sense-making projects are piecemeal, rather than sweeping. The Locavore's hypothesis is that the collection of local sense-making projects fails to issue a single overarching unifying framework deserving of the title \"the metaphysics that makes the best sense of science.\" I muster some examples supporting the Locavore hypothesis from the interpretation of quantum field theories.
Journal Article
Science At Centurys End
To most laypersons and scientists, science and progress appear to go hand in hand, yet philosophers and historians of science have long questioned the inevitability of this pairing. As we take leave of a century acclaimed for scientific advances and progress, Science at Century's End, the eighth volume of the Pittsburgh-Konstanz Series in the Philosophy and History of Science, takes the reader to the heart of this important matter. Subtitled Philosophical Questions on the Progress and Limits of Science, this timely volume contains twenty penetrating essays by prominent philosophers and historians who explore and debate the limits of scientific inquiry and their presumed consequences for science in the 21st century.
eBook
Johnny’s So Long at the Ferromagnet
Starting from the standard quantum formalism for a single spin
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system (e.g., an electron), this essay develops a model rich enough not only to afford an explication of symmetry breaking but also to frame questions about how to circumscribe physical possibility on behalf of theories that countenance symmetry breaking.
Journal Article
Infinite idealizations in science: an introduction
We offer a framework for organizing the literature regarding the debates revolving around infinite idealizations in science, and a short summary of the contributions to this special issue.
Journal Article
A Matter of Degree: Putting Unitary Inequivalence to Work
If a classical system has infinitely many degrees of freedom, its Hamiltonian quantization need not be unique up to unitary equivalence. I sketch different approaches (Hilbert space and algebraic) to understanding the content of quantum theories in light of this non‐uniqueness, and suggest that neither approach suffices to support explanatory aspirations encountered in the thermodynamic limit of quantum statistical mechanics.
Journal Article
Science at century's end : philosophical questions on the progress and limits of science
Twenty penetrating essays by prominent philosophers and historians who explore and debate the limits of scientific inquiry and their presumed consequences for science in the 21st century.
eBook