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arXiv2019

The Practice of Naturalness: A Historical-Philosophical Perspective

The fact that no evidence of new physics was found so far by LHC experiments has led some to call for the abandonment of the naturalness criterion. Others, on the contrary, have felt the need to break a lance in its defense by claiming that it should not be dismissed too quickly, but rather only reshaped to fit new needs. In this paper we argue that present pro or contra naturalness debates often miss an important historical point: that naturalness is essentially a hazily defined notion which, in the course of more than four decades, has been steadily, and often not coherently, shaped by its interplay with different branches of model-building in high-energy physics and cosmology on the one side, and new experimental results on the other side. The paper endeavours to clear up some of the physical and philosophical haze by taking a closer look back at the origin of naturalness in the 1970s and 1980s, with particular attention to the early work of Kenneth Wilson.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2018

The Geometry of Reduction: Model Embedding, Compound Reduction, and Overlapping State Space Domains

The relationship according to which one physical theory encompasses the domain of empirical validity of another is widely known as "reduction." Here it is argued that one popular methodology for showing that one theory reduces to another, associated with the so-called "Bronstein cube" of physical theories, rests on an over-simplified characterization of the type of mathematical relationship between theories that typically underpins reduction. An alternative methodology, based on a certain simple geometrical relationship between dis- tinct state space models of the same physical system, is then described and illustrated with examples. Within this approach, it is shown how and under what conditions inter-model reductions involving distinct model pairs can be composed or chained together to yield a direct reduction between theoretically remote descriptions of the same system. Building on this analysis, we consider cases in which a single reduction between two models may be effected via distinct composite reductions differing in their intermediate layer of description, and motivate a set of formal consistency requirements on the mappings between model state spaces and on the subsets of the model state spaces that characterize such reductions. These constraints are explicitly shown to hold in the reduction of a non-relativistic classical model to a model of relativistic quantum mechanics, which may be effected via distinct composite reductions in which the intermediate layer of description is either a model of non-relativistic quantum mechanics or of relativistic classical mechanics. Some brief speculations are offered as to whether and how this sort of consistency requirement between distinct composite reductions might serve to constrain the relationship that any unification of the Standard Model with general relativity must bear to these theories.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2022

Eternalism and Perspectival Realism about the 'Now'

Eternalism is the view that all times are equally real. The relativity of simultaneity in special relativity backs this up. There is no cosmically extended, self-existing 'now'. This leads to a tricky problem. What makes statements about the present true? I shall approach the problem along the lines of perspectival realism and argue that the choice of the perspective does. To corroborate this point, the Lorentz transformations of special relativity are compared to the structurally similar equations of the Doppler effect. The 'now' is perspectivally real in the same way as a particular electromagnetic spectrum frequency. I also argue that the ontology of time licensed by perspectival realism is more credible in this context than its current alternative, the fragmentalist interpretation of special relativity.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2019

On the diversity of stationary cosmologies in the first half of the twentieth century

Before the establishment of the hot Big Bang scenario as the modern paradigm of cosmology, it faced several early competitors : the so-called stationary cosmological models. There were truly plural and independent approaches incorporating cosmic expansion but without time evolution of the total cosmological density, thanks to the inclusion of some processes of continuous matter creation. We distinguish here three different independent motivations leading to a stationary vision of the universe. First, Einstein's concerns on the asymptotic behaviour of gravitation led him to consider continuous matter creation in a recently discovered unpublished work dated of 1931. Second, there is the quest by Dirac and Jordan for a scientific explanation of numerical coincidences in the values of fundamental constants, leading both to a time variation of Newton's constant and spontaneous matter creation. The third one appears in the steady-state theory of Bondi and Gold as the postulate of the Perfect Cosmological Principle according to which the properties of the universe do not depend in any way of the location and the epoch of the observer. Hoyle developed a mathematical model of spontaneous matter creation from a modification of general relativity that should be considered as a direct legacy of Einstein's and Dirac's approaches. Hoyle's model allows obtaining a "\textit{wide cosmological principle}" as an end-product, echoing Bondi and Gold's Perfect Cosmological Principle. Somewhat ironically, many modern key questions in hot Big Bang cosmology, like dark energy and inflation, can therefore be directly related to the physical motivations of the early stationary cosmologies.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2013

Fifty Years of Breakthrough Discoveries in Fluid Criticality

Fifty years ago two scientists, who celebrate their 80th birthdays in 2011, Alexander V. Voronel and Johannes V. Sengers performed breakthrough experiments that challenged the commonly accepted views on critical phenomena in fluids. Voronel discovered that the isochoric heat capacity of argon becomes infinite at the vapor-liquid critical point. Almost simultaneously, Sengers observed a similar anomaly for the thermal conductivity of near-critical carbon dioxide. The existence of these singularities was later proved to be universal for all fluids. These experiments had a profound effect on the development of the modern (scaling) theory of phase transitions, which is based on the diverging fluctuations of the order parameter. In particular, the discovery of the heat-capacity divergence at the critical point was a keystone for the formulation of static scaling theory, while the discovery of the divergence of the thermal conductivity played an important role in the formulation of dynamic scaling and mode-coupling theory. Moreover, owing to the discoveries made by Voronel and Sengers 50 years ago, critical phenomena in fluids have become an integral part of contemporary condensed-matter physics.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2018

Diagnosing the Trouble With Quantum Mechanics

We discuss an article by Steven Weinberg expressing his discontent with the usual ways to understand quantum mechanics. We examine the two solutions that he considers and criticizes and propose another one, which he does not discuss, the pilot wave theory or Bohmian mechanics, for which his criticisms do not apply.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2019

Do the Chinese Astronomical Records Dated AD 776 January 12/13 Describe an Auroral Display or a Lunar Halo? A Critical Re-examination

The enhancement of carbon-14 in tree rings around AD 774/775 has generated wide interest in solar activity at that time. The historical auroral records have been examined critically. Of particular interest was the "white vapour" observed in China on AD 776 January 12/13. Both Usoskin et al. (2013, Astron. Astrophys. 55, L3; U13) and Stephenson (2015, Adv. Sp. Res. 55, 1537; S15) interpreted this record as an auroral display. Subsequently, Neuhäuser and Neuhäuser (2015, Astron. Nachr. 336, 225; NN15) proposed five "criteria" for the likeliness of aurorae and on this basis rejected an auroral interpretation. Instead, they interpreted it as a lunar halo, and suggested there were no auroral records as a proxy of solar activity in the interval AD 774-785. We consider if their "lunar halo hypothesis" and their auroral criteria could be of use in future researches on historical auroral candidates. We first show a counter-example for the lunar halo hypothesis from a parallel record on 1882 November 17, which was seen as a whitish colour, in the southerly direction, and near the Moon. We then consider NN15's criteria on colour, direction, and sky brightness and investigate other counter-examples from early-modern auroral observations. We also consider the extension of the white vapour in AD 776 according to the distribution of Chinese asterisms, and show that its large extension was inconsistent with the lunar halo hypothesis. Conversely, the streaks of white vapour penetrating the eight Chinese asterisms can be reproduced if we consider auroral-ray structures at altitudes between 97 km and 170 km, along geomagnetic field lines between the L-shells L=1.55 and 1.64. Our investigations show that we should consider candidate auroral records in historical documents not on the basis of the newly suggested a priori criteria by NN15 but on all the available observational evidence.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2019

A Transit of Venus Possibly Misinterpreted as an Unaided-Eye Sunspot Observation in China on 9 December 1874

Large sunspots can be observed with the unaided eye under suitable atmospheric seeing conditions. Such observations are of particular value because the frequency of their appearance provides an approximate indication of the prevailing level of solar activity. Unaided-eye sunspot (UES) observations can be traced back well before the start of telescopic observations of the Sun, especially in the East Asian historical records. It is therefore important to compare more modern, UES observations with the results of telescopic sunspot observations, to gain a better understanding of the nature of the UES records. A previous comparison of Chinese UES records and Greenwich photo-heliographic results between 1874 and 1918 indicated that a few of the UES were apparently not supported by direct photographic evidence of at least one sunspot with a large area. This article reveals that one of the Chinese unaided-eye observations had possibly captured the transit of Venus on 9 December 1874. The Chinese sunspot records on this date are compared with Western sunspot observations on the same day. It is concluded that sunspots on the solar disk were quite small and the transit of Venus was probably misinterpreted as a sunspot by the Chinese local scholars. This case indicates that sunspots or comparable "obscuring" objects with an area as large as 1000 millionths of the solar disk could easily have been seen with the unaided eye under suitable seeing conditions. It also confirms the visibility of sunspots near the solar limb with the unaided eye. This study provides an explanation of the apparent discrepancy between the Chinese UES observation on 9 December 1874 and the Western sunspot observations using telescopes, as well as a basis for further discussion on the negative pairs in 1900 and 1911, apparently without sufficiently large area.

astro-ph.SR↗
arXiv2014

On the role of simplicity in science

Simple assumptions represent a decisive reason to prefer one theory to another in everyday scientific praxis. But this praxis has little philosophical justification, since there exist many notions of simplicity, and those that can be defined precisely strongly depend on the language in which the theory is formulated. The language dependence is a natural feature - to some extent - but it is also believed to be a fatal problem, because, according to a common general argument, the simplicity of a theory is always trivial in a suitably chosen language. But, this trivialization argument is typically either applied to toy-models of scientific theories or applied with little regard for the empirical content of the theory. This paper shows that the trivialization argument fails, when one considers realistic theories and requires their empirical content to be preserved. In fact, the concepts that enable a very simple formulation, are not necessarily measurable, in general. Moreover, the inspection of a theory describing a chaotic billiard shows that precisely those concepts that naturally make the theory extremely simple are provably not measurable. This suggests that - whenever a theory possesses sufficiently complex consequences - the constraint of measurability prevents too simple formulations in any language. This explains why the scientists often regard their assessments of simplicity as largely unambiguous. In order to reveal a cultural bias in the scientists' assessment, one should explicitly identify different characterizations of simplicity of the assumptions that lead to different theory selections. General arguments are not sufficient.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2014

How to account for quantum non-locality: ontic structural realism and the primitive ontology of quantum physics

The paper has two aims: (1) it sets out to show that it is well motivated to seek for an account of quantum non-locality in the framework of ontic structural realism (OSR), which integrates the notions of holism and non-separability that have been employed since the 1980s to achieve such an account. However, recent research shows that OSR on its own cannot provide such an account. Against this background, the paper argues that by applying OSR to the primitive ontology theories of quantum physics, one can accomplish that task. In particular, Bohmian mechanics offers the best prospect for doing so. (2) In general, the paper seeks to bring OSR and the primitive ontology theories of quantum physics together: on the one hand, in order to be applicable to quantum mechanics, OSR has to consider what the quantum ontology of matter distributed in space-time is. On the other hand, as regards the primitive ontology theories, OSR provides the conceptual tools for these theories to answer the question of what the ontological status of the wave-function is.

quant-ph↗
arXiv2018

Bohm's approach to quantum mechanics: Alternative theory or practical picture?

Since its inception Bohmian mechanics has been generally regarded as a hidden-variable theory aimed at providing an objective description of quantum phenomena. To date, this rather narrow conception of Bohm's proposal has caused it more rejection than acceptance. Now, after 65 years of Bohmian mechanics, should still be such an interpretational aspect the prevailing appraisal? Why not favoring a more pragmatic view, as a legitimate picture of quantum mechanics, on equal footing in all respects with any other more conventional quantum picture? These questions are used here to introduce a discussion on an alternative way to deal with Bohmian mechanics at present, enhancing its aspect as an efficient and useful picture or formulation to tackle, explore, describe and explain quantum phenomena where phase and correlation (entanglement) are key elements. This discussion is presented through two complementary blocks. The first block is aimed at briefly revisiting the historical context that gave rise to the appearance of Bohmian mechanics, and how this approach or analogous ones have been used in different physical contexts. This discussion is used to emphasize a more pragmatic view to the detriment of the more conventional hidden-variable (ontological) approach that has been a leitmotif within the quantum foundations. The second block focuses on some particular formal aspects of Bohmian mechanics supporting the view presented here, with special emphasis on the physical meaning of the local phase field and the associated velocity field encoded within the wave function. As an illustration, a simple model of Young's two-slit experiment is considered. The simplicity of this model allows to understand in an easy manner how the information conveyed by the Bohmian formulation relates to other more conventional concepts in quantum mechanics. This sort of pedagogical application is also aimed at ...

quant-ph↗
arXiv2014

Fermi and the Theory of Weak Interactions

The history of weak interactions starting with Fermi's creation of the beta decay theory and culminating in its modern avatar in the form of the electroweak gauge theory is described. Discoveries of parity violation, matter-antimatter asymmetry, W and Z bosons and neutrino mass are highlighted.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2019

An introduction to the classical three-body problem: From periodic solutions to instabilities and chaos

The classical three-body problem arose in an attempt to understand the effect of the Sun on the Moon's Keplerian orbit around the Earth. It has attracted the attention of some of the best physicists and mathematicians and led to the discovery of chaos. We survey the three-body problem in its historical context and use it to introduce several ideas and techniques that have been developed to understand classical mechanical systems.

nlin.CD↗
arXiv2019

On the interpretation of Feynman diagrams, or, did the LHC experiments observe $H \rightarrow γγ$?

According to the received view Feynman diagrams are a bookkeeping device in complex perturbative calculations. Thus, they do not provide a representation or model of the underlying physical process. This view is in apparent tension with scientific practice in high energy physics, which analyses its data in terms of `channels'. For example the Higgs discovery was based on the observation of the decay $H \rightarrow γγ$ -- a process which can be easily represented by the corresponding Feynman diagrams. I take issue with this tension and show that on closer analysis the story of the Higgs discovery should be told differently.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2019

Dependence Relations in General Relativity

The paper discusses from a metaphysical standpoint the nature of the dependence relation underpinning the talk of mutual action between material and spatiotemporal structures in general relativity. It is shown that the standard analyses of dependence in terms of causation or grounding are ill-suited for the general relativistic context. Instead, a non-standard analytical framework in terms of structural equation modeling is exploited, which leads to the conclusion that the kind of dependence encoded in the Einstein field equations is a novel one.

physics.hist-ph↗
arXiv2017

Forecasting in the light of Big Data

Predicting the future state of a system has always been a natural motivation for science and practical applications. Such a topic, beyond its obvious technical and societal relevance, is also interesting from a conceptual point of view. This owes to the fact that forecasting lends itself to two equally radical, yet opposite methodologies. A reductionist one, based on the first principles, and the naive inductivist one, based only on data. This latter view has recently gained some attention in response to the availability of unprecedented amounts of data and increasingly sophisticated algorithmic analytic techniques. The purpose of this note is to assess critically the role of big data in reshaping the key aspects of forecasting and in particular the claim that bigger data leads to better predictions. Drawing on the representative example of weather forecasts we argue that this is not generally the case. We conclude by suggesting that a clever and context-dependent compromise between modelling and quantitative analysis stands out as the best forecasting strategy, as anticipated nearly a century ago by Richardson and von Neumann.

physics.soc-ph↗