Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics最新文献

{"title":"Non-empirical robustness arguments in quantum gravity","authors":"Niels S. Linnemann","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In the first part of the article, I illustrate and assess instances of non-empirical robustness analysis as they occur within and across different theories of quantum gravity. The endeavour is expected to offer insights into the actual role robustness analysis plays in non-empirical theory development where motivation and theory development are not reactions to straightforward empirical problems.</p><p>In the second part, I aim at making mileage in providing a web of principles for quantum gravity research — a systematic ordering and assessment of principles for quantum gravity research in terms of a graph structure as originally proposed by Crowther and Linnemann (2017): To achieve this, I first draw on the results of the presented case studies to identify theory-overarching relations between principles which can feature in the web. I then assess the epistemic power of the thus obtained web and its prospects as an aid in the context of discovery more generally. This part is hoped to be helpful to the working physicist actually pursuing a theory of quantum gravity — by providing both an overview on how specific principles relate to one another and a methodology of how to reliably relate them in the first place. This is not to say that this aspect is not of interest to the philosopher — especially the (normative) task of providing a methodology raises relevant questions on how to distinguish between what's pursuit-worthy, and what's not.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"72 ","pages":"Pages 70-86"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45819672","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"When do Gibbsian phase averages and Boltzmannian equilibrium values agree?","authors":"Charlotte Werndl ,&nbsp;Roman Frigg","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.05.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.05.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p><span>This paper aims to shed light on the relation between Boltzmannian statistical mechanics and Gibbsian statistical mechanics by studying the Mechanical Averaging Principle, which says that, under certain conditions, Boltzmannian equilibrium values and Gibbsian phase averages are approximately equal. What are these conditions? We identify three conditions each of which is individually sufficient (but not necessary) for Boltzmannian equilibrium values to be approximately equal to Gibbsian phase averages: the Khinchin condition, and two conditions that result from two new theorems, the Average Equivalence Theorem and the Cancelling Out Theorem. These conditions are not trivially satisfied, and there are core models of statistical mechanics, the six-vertex model and the </span>Ising model, in which they can fail.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"72 ","pages":"Pages 46-69"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.05.003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"88166367","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"How does physics bear upon metaphysics; and why did Plato hold that philosophy cannot be written down?","authors":"Howard Stein","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.004","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"72 ","pages":"Pages 152-161"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45363443","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Separating Einstein's separability","authors":"Sebastián Murgueitio Ramírez","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.10.001","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.10.001","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this paper, I accomplish a conceptual task and a historical task. The conceptual task is to argue that (1) Einstein's Principle of Separability (henceforth “separability”) is not a supervenience principle and that (2) separability and entanglement are compatible. I support (1) by showing that the conclusion of Einstein's incompleteness argument would still follow even if one assumes that the state of a composite system does not supervene on the states of the subsystems, and by showing that what Einstein says in “Quantum Mechanics and Reality” (1948) strongly suggests that separability is not a principle about how subsystem states relate to the state of composite systems. I support (2) by showing that if separability was incompatible with entanglement, then Einstein's argument would be incoherent in a trivial way. Thus, by arguing for (1) and (2) I directly challenge what has been, and still is, a very common reading of separability. The historical task is to offer the first detailed review of the different ways in which separability has been defined by physicists and philosophers in the last 60 years. Among other things, such a review distinguishes three different definitions of the principle, and shows that since the 1990s and up until the present date, it became standard to take separability (as presented by Einstein) to be a supervenience principle.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"72 ","pages":"Pages 138-149"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-11-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.10.001","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42102909","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Hamiltonian mechanics is conservation of information entropy","authors":"Gabriele Carcassi,&nbsp;Christine A. Aidala","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.004","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.004","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>In this work we show the equivalence between Hamiltonian mechanics and conservation of information entropy. We will show that distributions with coordinate independent values for information entropy require that the manifold on which the distribution is defined is charted by conjugate pairs (i.e. it is a symplectic manifold). We will also show that further requiring that the information entropy is conserved during the evolution yields Hamilton's equations.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"71 ","pages":"Pages 60-71"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.004","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49041766","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Quantum relational indeterminacy","authors":"Claudio Calosi ,&nbsp;Cristian Mariani","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.002","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.002","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>The paper presents the first thorough investigation of quantum metaphysical indeterminacy (MI) in the context of the Relational Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (RQM). We contend that the interaction between MI and RQM is mutually beneficial. On the one hand, MI provides a metaphysical framework for RQM that has been neglected in the literature, and that promises to undermine some objections that are often raised against RQM. On the other hand, RQM might serve as an example of fundamental quantum MI.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"71 ","pages":"Pages 158-169"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.06.002","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47977168","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Howard Stein on sophisticated practice of philosophers/scientists","authors":"William L. Harper","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.008","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.008","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"71 ","pages":"Pages 196-208"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.008","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41300968","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Absolute space and Newton's theory of relativity","authors":"Robert DiSalle","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.003","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>Newton's metaphysical picture of space and time provides the conceptual background for his theory of motion. Philosophical discussions of absolute space and time, however, underemphasize Newton's concern with the relativity of motion. From a modern perspective, this is usually seen as a concern that Newton himself did not take seriously enough, especially in comparison with contemporaries such as Huygens and Leibniz. In one sense, however, Newton pursued the problem of the relativity of motion further than his contemporary critics. In fact, while they defended the relativity of motion as a general principle, only Newton tried to develop what may legitimately be called a theory of relativity: a systematic theoretical account of what is objective in the description of physical interactions, and a principled distinction between the objective properties and those that depend on the choice of a frame of reference. On this basis Newton articulated, more clearly than any of his contemporaries, the conceptual revisions imposed by the relativity of motion on prevailing notions of force, inertia, and causality. We can see this from the history of his use of the Galilean relativity principle, which became Corollary V to the Laws of Motion. Moreover, while his critics demanded a mechanistic alternative to his theory of gravitation, Newton not only saw the empirical power of his theory, and its exemplary power for the theory and practice of physics in general; he also saw that the peculiar nature of gravity placed the problem of the relativity of motion in a dramatically new light. This is seen in his development and use of Corollary VI.</p><p>By studying the progress of Newton's thought about these relativity principles, and the profound changes in his views between early manuscripts such as <em>De Gravitatione</em> and the first drafts of the <em>Principia</em>, we can see why Newton did not regard them as undermining his aim to determine “the true motions” in the solar system. On the contrary, he saw it as enabling him to separate the local problem of “true motion” for a given system of bodies, from the global problem of how that system might be moving with respect to absolute space. In other words, Newton, having acknowledged that absolute space is unobservable, and motion with respect to it therefore unknowable, nonetheless could solve the problem of “the system of the world.” Indeed, the history of his thinking shows that Newton introduced the theory of absolute space precisely in order to articulate his theory of relativity. Newton's use of relativity principles sheds light on the relation between mathematical principles and causal explanation in physics.</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"71 ","pages":"Pages 232-244"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48846087","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Holography without holography: How to turn inter-representational into intra-theoretical relations in AdS/CFT","authors":"Rasmus Jaksland ,&nbsp;Niels S. Linnemann","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.007","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.007","url":null,"abstract":"<div><p>We show by means of the AdS/CFT correspondence in the context of quantum gravity how inter-representational relations—loosely speaking relations among different equivalent representations of one and the same physics—can play out as a tool for intra-theoretical developments and thus boost theory development in the context of discovery. More precisely, we first show that, as a duality, the AdS/CFT correspondence cannot in itself testify to the quantum origin of gravity (though it may be utilized for this purpose). We then establish through two case studies from emergent gravity (Jacobson (2016); Verlinde (2017)) that the holographic AdS/CFT correspondence can, however, still excel as a guiding principle towards the quantum origin of gravity (similar in nature to quantisation).</p></div>","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"71 ","pages":"Pages 101-117"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.04.007","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"78772604","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"OA","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}

{"title":"Q.E.D., QED","authors":"Adam Koberinski,&nbsp;Chris Smeenk","doi":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.03.003","DOIUrl":"10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.03.003","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":54442,"journal":{"name":"Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics","volume":"71 ","pages":"Pages 1-13"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1016/j.shpsb.2020.03.003","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49194284","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}