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5563 results in History, Philosophy and Foundations of Physics

Page 28 of 279

  • 9 - Physics without Experiments?

  • from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 154-172

  • Summary

    Many scientific theories in fundamental physics are faced with the problem that they lack empirical support. This has led to alternative methods of theory assessment that do not rely on experiments. For instance, Dawid has proposed a non-empirical method of theory assessment that strongly relies on the concept of theory space. We argue that the lack of empirical data as well as this new proposed methodology require a change in scientific practice, namely toward an active search for alternative competing theories. We further argue that this change in practice would face at least three challenges, which illustrate the difficulty of implementing this change of focus in practice.

  • 2 - Fundamental Theories and Epistemic Shifts: Can the History of Science Serve as a Guide?

  • from Part I - Historical and Conceptual Background
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 13-28

  • Summary

    The recent debate about fundamental physical theories with no or little connection to experiment and observation concerns primarily the relationship between theoretical physics and philosophy. There are reasons to believe that a more enlightened perspective on the debate can be obtained by also taking into regard the history of physics and history of science generally. Possibly unknown to many physicists, there are several historical precedents, cases that are somewhat analogous to the present one and from which much can be learned. Apart from outlining what I consider to be the essence of the current debate, this chapter briefly discusses the general role that history of science can play in science and philosophy of science. It refers to some noteworthy lessons from past physics, of which one particular case, the nineteenth-century vortex theory of matter, is singled out as a possible analogy to the methodological situation in string physics. While I do not suggest that these earlier cases are substantially similar to the ones concerning string theory and the multiverse, I do suggest that there are sufficient similarities on the level of methodology and rhetoric to make them relevant for modern physicists and philosophers.

  • 13 - The Limits of Cosmology

  • from Part III - Cosmology and Testability
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 227-252

  • Summary

    This chapter discusses how one might follow up on our present remarkable, and surprising, confirmation to high precision of what has become known as the Standard Model of cosmology. This model is purely phenomenological and establishes a robust framework around which a number of fundamental issues remain unresolved. To make further progress, what is our optimal choice of future strategy? How do we approach accuracy, as opposed to precision? With finite resources, how do we prioritize between pursuing the nature of the dark matter or the possible evolution of dark energy or how the universe began, in the limited context of being able to falsify inflationary cosmology?

  • 5 - Philosophy of Science and the String Wars: A View from the Outside

  • from Part I - Historical and Conceptual Background
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 84-96

  • Summary

    Trouble, as explicitly hinted at in the title of a recent book by Lee Smolin, has been brewing for a while within the fundamental physics community. Ideas such as string theory and the multiverse have been both vehemently defended as sound science and widely criticized for being "not even wrong," in the title of another book, by Peter Woit. More recently, George Ellis and Joe Silk have written a prominent op-ed piece in Nature, inviting their colleagues to defend the very integrity of physics. Cosmologist Sean Carroll has responded that physics doesn't need "the falsifiability police," referring to the famous (and often misunderstood) concept introduced by philosopher Karl Popper to demarcate science from pseudoscience. The debate is not just "for the heart and soul" of physics, but has spilled onto social media, newspapers, and radio. What is at stake is the public credibility of physics in particular and of science more generally – especially in an era of widespread science denial (of evolution and anthropogenic climate change, for instance) and rampant pseudoscience (e.g., the antivaccine movement). Since philosophers of science have been invoked by both sides of the dispute, it may be useful to take a look at the "physics wars" from a more detached philosophical perspective, in my case informed by my former career as an evolutionary biologist, a field whose recent history has peculiar similarities with what is currently going on in fundamental physics, in terms of both strong internal disputes and perception by a significant portion of the general public.

  • 12 - Are Black Holes about Information?

  • from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 202-224

  • Summary

    Information theory is increasingly invoked by physicists concerned with fundamental physics, including black hole physics. But to what extent is the application of information theory in those contexts legitimate? Using the case of black hole thermodynamics and Bekenstein’s celebrated argument for the entropy of black holes, I argue that information-theoretic notions are problematic in the present case. Bekenstein’s original argument, as suggestive as it may appear, thus fails. This example is particularly pertinent to the theme of the present volume because the Bekenstein–Hawking formula for black hole entropy is widely accepted as "empirical data" in notoriously empirically deprived quantum gravity, even though the laws of black hole thermodynamics have so far evaded empirical confirmation.

  • 8 - No Alternative to Proliferation

  • from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 125-153

  • Summary

    We reflect on the nature, role, and limits of non-empirical theory assessment in fundamental physics, focusing in particular on quantum gravity. We argue for the usefulness and, to some extent, necessity of non-empirical theory assessment, but also examine critically its dangers. We conclude that the principle of proliferation of theories is not only at the very root of theory assessment, but all the more necessary when experimental tests are scarce, and also that, in the same situation, it represents the only medicine against the degeneration of scientific research programs.

  • 7 - The Dangers of Non-Empirical Confirmation

  • from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 120-124

  • Summary

    In the book String Theory and the Scientific Method,Richard Dawid describes a few of the many non-empirical arguments that motivate theoretical physicists’ confidence in a theory, taking string theory as case study. I argue that excessive reliance on non-empirical evidence compromises the reliability of science, and that precisely the case of string theory well illustrates this danger: Being Bayesian on positive hints, and Popperian when things go wrong, is not rational, but rather is blindness.

  • 4 - Assessing Scientific Theories: The Bayesian Approach

  • from Part I - Historical and Conceptual Background
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 67-83

  • Summary

    Scientists use a variety of methods to assess their theories. While experimental testing remains the gold standard, several other more controversial methods have been proposed, especially in fundamental physics. Among these methods are the use of analogue experiments and so-called non-empirical ways of theory assessment such as the no- alternatives argument. But how can these methods themselves be assessed? Are they reliable guides to the truth, or are they of no help at all when it comes to assessing scientific theories? In this chapter, we develop a general Bayesian framework to scrutinize these new (as well as standard empirical) methods of assessing scientific theories and illustrate the proposed methodology by two detailed case studies. This allows us to explore under which conditions nontraditional ways of assessing scientific theories are successful and what can be done to improve them.

  • 3 - Scientific Speculation: A Pragmatic Approach

  • from Part I - Historical and Conceptual Background
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 29-66

  • Summary

    During the history of science, controversies have emerged regarding the legitimacy of speculating in science. At the outset, I describe speculating as introducing assumptions without knowing that there is evidence for those assumptions. If there is evidence, the speculator does not know that. If there is no such evidence, the speculator may or may not know that. The speculator may even be introducing such assumptions implicitly without realizing that he is. In any of these cases (under certain conditions to be specified later), he is speculating. I use the term “speculation” to refer both to the activity of speculating and to the product of that activity – the assumptions themselves. Which is meant should be clear from the context. In this chapter, I seek to do three things: (1) to clarify and expand the initial characterization of speculation; (2) to ask whether and under what conditions speculating in science is a legitimate activity; and (3) assuming that speculating is or can be legitimate, to consider how, if at all, speculations are to be evaluated. Although philosophers and scientists have expressed strong and conflicting opinions on the subject of the second task, little has been written about the other two, particularly the first.

  • 6 - The Significance of Non-Empirical Confirmation in Fundamental Physics

  • from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 99-119

  • Summary

    In the absence of empirical confirmation, scientists may judge a theory's chances of being viable based on a wide range of arguments. This chapter argues that such arguments can differ substantially with regard to their structural similarity to empirical confirmation. Arguments that resemble empirical confirmation in a number of crucial respects provide a better basis for reliable judgment and can, in a Bayesian sense, amount to significant non-empirical confirmation. It is shown that three kinds of non-empirical confirmation that have been specified in earlier work do satisfy those conditions.

  • 10 - Scientific Methodology: A View from Early String Theory

  • from Part II - Theory Assessment beyond Empirical Confirmation
  • Edited by Radin Dardashti, Richard Dawid, Karim Thébault, University of Bristol
  • Book:
    Why Trust a Theory?
    Published online:
    06 March 2019
    Print publication:
    14 March 2019, pp 173-183

  • Summary

    This chapter is devoted to addressing the question as to whether the methodology followed in building/assessing string theory can be considered scientific – in the same sense, say, that the methodology followed in building/assessing the Standard Model of particle physics is scientific – by focusing on the ”founding” period of the theory. More precisely, its aim is to argue for a positive answer to this question in the light of a historical analysis of the early developments of the string theoretical framework.

Page 28 of 279