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The world needs young people who are skillful in and enthusiastic about science and who view science as their future career field. Ensuring that we will have such young people requires initiatives that engage students in interesting and motivating science experiences. Today, students can investigate scientific phenomena using the tools, data collection techniques, models, and theories of science in physical laboratories that support interactions with the material world or in virtual laboratories that take advantage of simulations. Here, we review a selection of the literature to contrast the value of physical and virtual investigations and to offer recommendations for combining the two to strengthen science learning.

This paper provides a restatement and defense of the data/phenomena distinction introduced by Jim Bogen and me several decades ago (e.g., Bogen and Woodward, The Philosophical Review, 303-352,1988). Additional motivation for the distinction is introduced, ideas surrounding the distinction are clarified, and an attempt is made to respond to several criticisms.

Our purpose in this paper is to delineate an ontology for quantum mechanics that results adequate to the formalism of the theory. We will restrict our aim to the search of an ontology that expresses the conceptual content of the recently proposed modal-Hamiltonian interpretation, according to which the domain referred to by nonrelativistic quantum mechanics is an ontology of properties. The usual strategy in the literature has been to focus on only one of the interpretive problems of the theory and to design an interpretation to solve it, leaving aside the remaining difficulties. On the contrary, our aim in the present work is to formulate a \"global\" solution, according to which different problems can be adequately tackled in terms of a single ontology populated of properties, in which systems are bundles of properties. In particular, we will conceive indistinguishability between bundles as a relation derived from indistinguishability between properties, and we will show that states, when operating on combinations of indistinguishable bundles, act as if they were symmetric with no need of a symmetrization postulate.

Muller and Saunders ([2008]) purport to demonstrate that, surprisingly, bosons and fermions are discernible; this article disputes their arguments, then derives a similar conclusion in a more satisfactory fashion. After briefly explicating their proof and indicating how it escapes earlier indiscernibility results, we note that the observables which Muller and Saunders argue discern particles are (i) non-symmetric in the case of bosons and (ii) trivial multiples of the identity in the case of fermions. Both problems undermine the claim that they have shown particles to be physically discernible. We then prove two results concerning observables that are truly physical: one showing when particles are discernible and one showing when they are not (categorically) discernible. Along the way we clarify some frequently misunderstood issues concerning the interpretation of quantum observables.

This is the revised version of an invited keynote lecture delivered at the \"1st Australian Computing and Philosophy Conference\" (CAP@AU; the Australian National University in Canberra, 31 October—2 November, 2003). The paper is divided into two parts. The first part defends an informational approach to structural realism. It does so in three steps. First, it is shown that, within the debate about structural realism (SR), epistemic (ESR) and ontic (OSR) structural realism are reconcilable. It follows that a version of OSR is defensible from a structuralist-friendly position. Second, it is argued that a version of OSR is also plausible, because not all relata (structured entities) are logically prior to relations (structures). Third, it is shown that a version of OSR is also applicable to both sub-observable (unobservable and instrumentally-only observable) and observable entities, by developing its ontology of structural objects in terms of informational objects. The outcome is informational structural realism, a version of OSR supporting the ontological commitment to a view of the world as the totality of informational objects dynamically interacting with each other. The paper has been discussed by several colleagues and, in the second half, ten objections that have been moved to the proposal are answered in order to clarify it further.

According to Ian Hacking's Entity Realism, unobservable entities that scientists carefully manipulate to study other phenomena are real. Although Hacking presents his case in an intuitive, attractive, and persuasive way, his argument remains elusive. I present five possible readings of Hacking's argument: a no-miracle argument, an indispensability argument, a transcendental argument, a Vichian argument, and a non-argument. I elucidate Hacking's argument according to each reading, and review their strengths, their weaknesses, and their compatibility with each other.

In a previous paper, Hayden and I (Deutsch & Hayden 2000 Proc. R. Soc. Lond. A 456, 1759-1774. (doi:10.1098/rspa.2000.0585)) proved, using the Heisenberg picture, that quantum physics satisfies Einstein's criterion of locality. Wallace and Timpson (Wallace & Timpson 2007 Found. Phys. 37, 951-955. (doi:10.1007/s10701-007-9135-7)) have argued that certain transformations of the Heisenberg-picture description of a quantum system must be regarded as leaving invariant the factual situation being described, and that taking this into account reveals that Einstein's criterion is violated after all. Here, I vindicate the proof and explain some misconceptions that have led to this and other criticisms of it.

The last two decades have seen a rising interest in (a) the notion of a scientific phenomenon as distinct from theories and data, and (b) the intricacies of experimentally producing and stabilizing phenomena. This paper develops an analysis of the stabilization of phenomena that integrates two aspects that have largely been treated separately in the literature: one concerns the skills required for empirical work; the other concerns the strategies by which claims about phenomena are validated. I argue that in order to make sense of the process of stabilization, we need to distinguish between two types of phenomena: phenomena as patterns in the data (\"surface regularities\") and phenomena as underlying (or \"hidden\") regularities. I show that the epistemic relationships that data bear to each of these types of phenomena are different: Data patterns are instantiated by individual data, whereas underlying regularities are indicated by individual data, insofar as they instantiate a data pattern. Drawing on an example from memory research, I argue that neither of these two kinds of phenomenon can be stabilized in isolation. I conclude that what is stabilized when phenomena are stabilized is the fit between surface regularities and hidden regularities.

I propose a semantics for a class of English predicates characteristically associated with possibility. The central idea is that such predicates are typically associated with an ordering source, and that differences among them are due to differences in their ordering sources. The 'dispositional predicates' that have been central to philosophical discussions are shown to be derivable as a special case from this more general class.

In this study, we investigated how students used a drawing tool to visualize their ideas of chemical reaction processes. We interviewed 30 students using thinking-aloud and retrospective methods and provided them with a drawing tool. We identified four types of connections the students made as they used the tool: drawing on existing knowledge, incorporating dynamic aspects of chemical processes, linking a visualization to the associated chemical phenomenon, and connecting between the visualization and chemistry concepts. We also compared students who were able to create dynamic visualizations with those who only created static visualizations. The results indicated a relationship between students constructing a dynamic view of chemical reaction processes and their understanding of chemical reactions. This study provides insights into the use of visualizations to support instruction and assessment to facilitate students' integrated understanding of chemical reactions.