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1 2 Woodward, "Scientific explanation", §2 "The DN model", in SEP, 2011.
1 2 James Fetzer, ch 3 "The paradoxes of Hempelian explanation", in Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality (Oxford U P, 2000), p 113.
↑ Montuschi, Objects in Social Science (Continuum, 2003), pp 61–62.
↑ Bechtel, Philosophy of Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), ch 2, subch "DN model of explanation and HD model of theory development", pp 25–26.
1 2 Bechtel, Philosophy of Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), ch 2, subch "Axiomatic account of theories", pp 27–29.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Suppe, "Afterword—1977", "Introduction", §1 "Swan song for positivism", §1A "Explanation and intertheoretical reduction", pp 619–24, in Suppe, ed, Structure of Scientific Theories, 2nd edn (U Illinois P, 1977).
1 2 3 4 5 Kenneth F Schaffner, "Explanation and causation in biomedical sciences", pp 79–125, in Laudan, ed, Mind and Medicine (U California P, 1983), p 81.
1 2 G Montalenti, ch 2 "From Aristotle to Democritus via Darwin", in Ayala & Dobzhansky, eds, Studies in the Philosophy of Biology (U California P, 1974).
↑ In the 17th century, Descartes as well as Isaac Newton firmly believed in God as nature's designer and thereby firmly believed in natural purposiveness, yet found teleology to be outside science's inquiry (Bolotin, Approach to Aristotle's Physics, pp 31–33). By 1650, formalizing heliocentrism and launching mechanical philosophy, Cartesian physics overthrew geocentrism as well as Aristotelian physics. In the 1660s, Robert Boyle sought to lift chemistry as a new discipline from alchemy. Newton more especially sought the laws of nature—simply the regularities of phenomena—whereby Newtonian physics, reducing celestial science to terrestrial science, ejected from physics the vestige of Aristotelian metaphysics, thus disconnecting physics and alchemy/chemistry, which then followed its own course, yielding chemistry around 1800.
↑ Nicknames for principles attributed to Hume—Hume's fork, problem of induction, Hume's law—were not created by Hume but by later philosophers labeling them for ease of reference.
↑ By Hume's fork, the truths of mathematics and logic as formal sciences are universal through "relations of ideas"—simply abstract truths—thus knowable without experience. On the other hand, the claimed truths of empirical sciences are contingent on "fact and real existence", knowable only upon experience. By Hume's fork, the two categories never cross. Any treatises containing neither can contain only "sophistry and illusion". (Flew, Dictionary, "Hume's fork", p 156).
↑ Not privy to the world's either necessities or impossibilities, but by force of habit or mental nature, humans experience sequence of sensory events, find seeming constant conjunction, make the unrestricted generalization of an enumerative induction, and justify it by presuming uniformity of nature. Humans thus attempt to justify a minor induction by adding a major induction, both logically invalid and unverified by experience—the problem of induction—how humans irrationally presume discovery of causality. (Chakraborti, Logic, p 381; Flew, Dictionary, "Hume", p 156.
1 2 3 4 5 Kundi M (2006). "Causality and the interpretation of epidemiologic evidence". Environmental Health Perspectives. 114 (7): 969–974. doi:10.1289/ehp.8297. PMC 1513293. PMID 16835045.
↑ Kant inferred that the mind's constants arrange space holding Euclidean geometry—like Newton's absolute space—while objects interact temporally as modeled in Newton's theory of motion, whose law of universal gravitation is a truth synthetic a priori, that is, contingent on experience, indeed, but known universally true without universal experience. Thus, the mind's innate constants cross the tongs of Hume's fork and lay Newton's universal gravitation as a priori truth.
1 2 Chakravartty, "Scientific realism", §1.2 "The three dimensions of realist commitment", in SEP, 2013: "Semantically, realism is committed to a literal interpretation of scientific claims about the world. In common parlance, realists take theoretical statements at 'face value'. According to realism, claims about scientific entities, processes, properties, and relations, whether they be observable or unobservable, should be construed literally as having truth values, whether true or false. This semantic commitment contrasts primarily with those of so-called instrumentalist epistemologies of science, which interpret descriptions of unobservables simply as instruments for the prediction of observable phenomena, or for systematizing observation reports. Traditionally, instrumentalism holds that claims about unobservable things have no literal meaning at all (though the term is often used more liberally in connection with some antirealist positions today). Some antirealists contend that claims involving unobservables should not be interpreted literally, but as elliptical for corresponding claims about observables".
1 2 Challenges to scientific realism are captured succinctly by Bolotin, Approach to Aristotle's Physics (SUNY P, 1998), pp 33–34, commenting about modern science, "But it has not succeeded, of course, in encompassing all phenomena, at least not yet. For it laws are mathematical idealizations, idealizations, moreover, with no immediate basis in experience and with no evident connection to the ultimate causes of the natural world. For instance, Newton's first law of motion (the law of inertia) requires us to imagine a body that is always at rest or else moving aimlessly in a straight line at a constant speed, even though we never see such a body, and even though according to his own theory of universal gravitation, it is impossible that there can be one. This fundamental law, then, which begins with a claim about what would happen in a situation that never exists, carries no conviction except insofar as it helps to predict observable events. Thus, despite the amazing success of Newton's laws in predicting the observed positions of the planets and other bodies, Einstein and Infeld are correct to say, in The Evolution of Physics, that 'we can well imagine another system, based on different assumptions, might work just as well'. Einstein and Infeld go on to assert that 'physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world'. To illustrate what they mean by this assertion, they compare the modern scientist to a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. If he is ingenious, they acknowledge, this man 'may form some picture of a mechanism which would be responsible for all the things he observes'. But they add that he 'may never quite be sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison'. In other words, modern science cannot claim, and it will never be able to claim, that it has the definite understanding of any natural phenomenon".
↑ Whereas a hypothetical imperative is practical, simply what one ought to do if one seeks a particular outcome, the categorical imperative is morally universal, what everyone always ought to do.
1 2 Bourdeau, "Auguste Comte", §§ "Abstract" & "Introduction", in Zalta, ed, SEP, 2013.
↑ Comte, A General View of Positivism (Trübner, 1865), pp 49–50, including the following passage: "As long as men persist in attempting to answer the insoluble questions which occupied the attention of the childhood of our race, by far the more rational plan is to do as was done then, that is, simply to give free play to the imagination. These spontaneous beliefs have gradually fallen into disuse, not because they have been disproved, but because humankind has become more enlightened as to its wants and the scope of its powers, and has gradually given an entirely new direction to its speculative efforts".
↑ Flew, Dictionary (St Martin's, 1984), "Positivism", p 283.
1 2 3 Woodward, "Scientific explanation", §1 "Background and introduction", in SEP, 2011.
1 2 Friedman, Reconsidering Logical Positivism (Cambridge U P, 1999), p xii.
↑ Any positivism placed in the 20th century is generally neo, although there was Ernst Mach's positivism nearing 1900, and a general positivistic approach to science—traceable to the inductivist trend from Bacon at 1620, the Newtonian research program at 1687, and Comptean positivism at 1830—that continues in a vague but usually disavowed sense within popular culture and some sciences.
↑ Neopositivists are sometimes called "verificationists".
1 2 Woodward, "Scientific explanation", in Zalta, ed, SEP, 2011, abstract.
↑ Carl G Hempel & Paul Oppenheim, "Studies in the logic of explanation", Philosophy of Science, 1948 Apr; 15(2):135–175.
1 2 3 4 Bechtel, Discovering Cell Mechanisms (Cambridge U P, 2006), esp pp 24–25.
1 2 Woodward, "Scientific explanation", §2 "The DN model", §2.3 "Inductive statistical explanation", in Zalta, ed, SEP, 2011.
↑ von Wright, Explanation and Understanding (Cornell U P, 1971), p 11.
1 2 Stuart Glennan, "Explanation", § "Covering-law model of explanation", in Sarkar & Pfeifer, eds, Philosophy of Science (Routledge, 2006), p 276.
↑ Manfred Riedel, "Causal and historical explanation", in Manninen & Tuomela, eds, Essays on Explanation and Understanding (D Reidel, 1976), pp 3–4.
↑ Neopositivism's fundamental tenets were the verifiability criterion of cognitive meaningfulness, the analytic/synthetic gap, and the observation/theory gap. From 1950 to 1951, Carl Gustav Hempel renounced the verifiability criterion. In 1951 Willard Van Orman Quine attacked the analytic/synthetic gap. In 1958, Norwood Russell Hanson blurred the observational/theoretical gap. In 1959, Karl Raimund Popper attacked all of verificationism—he attacked, actually, any type of positivism—by asserting falsificationism. In 1962, Thomas Samuel Kuhn overthrew foundationalism, which was erroneously presumed to be a fundamental tenet of neopositivism.
↑ Fetzer, "Carl Hempel", §3 "Scientific reasoning", in SEP, 2013: "The need to dismantle the verifiability criterion of meaningfulness together with the demise of the observational/theoretical distinction meant that logical positivism no longer represented a rationally defensible position. At least two of its defining tenets had been shown to be without merit. Since most philosophers believed that Quine had shown the analytic/synthetic distinction was also untenable, moreover, many concluded that the enterprise had been a total failure. Among the important benefits of Hempel's critique, however, was the production of more general and flexible criteria of cognitive significance in Hempel (1965b), included in a famous collection of his studies, Aspects of Scientific Explanation (1965d). There he proposed that cognitive significance could not be adequately captured by means of principles of verification or falsification, whose defects were parallel, but instead required a far more subtle and nuanced approach. Hempel suggested multiple criteria for assessing the cognitive significance of different theoretical systems, where significance is not categorical but rather a matter of degree: 'Significant systems range from those whose entire extralogical vocabulary consists of observation terms, through theories whose formulation relies heavily on theoretical constructs, on to systems with hardly any bearing on potential empirical findings' (Hempel 1965b: 117). The criteria Hempel offered for evaluating the 'degrees of significance' of theoretical systems (as conjunctions of hypotheses, definitions, and auxiliary claims) were (a) the clarity and precision with which they are formulated, including explicit connections to observational language; (b) the systematic—explanatory and predictive—power of such a system, in relation to observable phenomena; (c) the formal simplicity of the systems with which a certain degree of systematic power is attained; and (d) the extent to which those systems have been confirmed by experimental evidence (Hempel 1965b). The elegance of Hempel's study laid to rest any lingering aspirations for simple criteria of 'cognitive significance' and signaled the demise of logical positivism as a philosophical movement".
↑ Popper, "Against big words", In Search of a Better World (Routledge, 1996), pp 89-90.
↑ Hacohen, Karl Popper: The Formative Years (Cambridge U P, 2000), pp 212–13.
↑ Logik der Forschung, published in Austria in 1934, was translated by Popper from German to English, The Logic of Scientific Discovery, and arrived in the English-speaking world in 1959.
1 2 3 4 Reutlinger, Schurz & Hüttemann, "Ceteris paribus", § 1.1 "Systematic introduction", in Zalta, ed, SEP, 2011.
↑ As scientific study of cells, cytology emerged in the 19th century, yet its technology and methods were insufficient to clearly visualize and establish existence of any cell organelles beyond the nucleus.
↑ The first famed biochemistry experiment was Edward Buchner's in 1897 (Morange, A History, p 11). The biochemistry discipline soon emerged, initially investigating colloids in biological systems, a "biocolloidology" (Morange p 12; Bechtel, Discovering, p 94). This yielded to macromolecular theory, the term macromolecule introduced by German chemist Hermann Staudinger in 1922 (Morange p 12).
↑ Cell biology emerged principally at Rockefeller Institute through new technology (electron microscope and ultracentrifuge) and new techniques (cell fractionation and advancements in staining and fixation).
↑ James Fetzer, ch 3 "The paradoxes of Hempelian explanation", in Fetzer J, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality (Oxford U P, 2000), pp 121–122.
↑ Fetzer, ch 3 in Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality (Oxford U P, 2000), p 129.
1 2 Bechtel, Philosophy of Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), ch 1, subch "Areas of philosophy that bear on philosophy of science", § "Metaphysics", pp 8–9, § "Epistemology", p 11.
↑ H Atmanspacher, R C Bishop & A Amann, "Extrinsic and intrinsic irreversibility in probabilistic dynamical laws", in Khrennikov, ed, Proceedings (World Scientific, 2001), pp 51–52.
↑ Fetzer, ch 3, in Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality (Oxford U P, 2000), p 118, poses some possible ways that natural laws, so called, when epistemic can fail as ontic: "The underlying conception is that of bringing order to our knowledge of the universe. Yet there are at least three reasons why even complete knowledge of every empirical regularity that obtains during the world's history might not afford an adequate inferential foundation for discovery of the world's laws. First, some laws might remain uninstantiated and therefore not be displayed by any regularity. Second, some regularities may be accidental and therefore not display any law of nature. And, third, in the case of probabilistic laws, some frequencies might deviate from their generating nomic probabilities 'by chance' and therefore display natural laws in ways that are unrepresentative or biased".
↑ This theory reduction occurs if, and apparently only if, the Sun and one planet are modeled as a two-body system, excluding all other planets (Torretti, Philosophy of Physics, pp 60–62).
↑ Spohn, Laws of Belief (Oxford U P, 2012), p 305.
↑ Whereas fundamental physics has sought laws of universal regularity, special sciences normally include ceteris paribus laws, which are predictively accurate to high probability in "normal conditions" or with "all else equal", but have exceptions [Reutlinger et al § 1.1]. Chemistry's laws seem exceptionless in their domains, yet were in principle reduced to fundamental physics [Feynman p 5, Schwarz Fig 1, and so are special sciences.
↑ Bechtel, Philosophy of Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), ch 5, subch "Introduction: Relating disciplines by relating theories" pp 71–72.
1 2 Bechtel, Philosophy of Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), ch 5, subch "Theory reduction model and the unity of science program" pp 72–76.
1 2 Bem & de Jong, Theoretical Issues (Sage, 2006), pp 45–47.
1 2 3 O'Shaughnessy, Explaining Buyer Behavior (Oxford U P, 1992), pp 17–19.
1 2 Spohn, Laws of Belief (Oxford U P, 2012), p 306.
1 2 Karhausen, L. R. (2000). "Causation: The elusive grail of epidemiology". Medicine, health care, and philosophy. 3 (1): 59–67. doi:10.1023/A:1009970730507. PMID 11080970.
↑ Bechtel, Philosophy of Science (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988), ch 3, subch "Repudiation of DN model of explanation", pp 38–39.
1 2 3 Rothman, K. J.; Greenland, S. (2005). "Causation and Causal Inference in Epidemiology". American Journal of Public Health. 95: S144–S150. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2004.059204. PMID 16030331.
↑ Boffetta, "Causation in the presence of weak associations", Crit Rev Food Sci Nutr, 2010; 50(S1):13–16.
↑ Making no commitment as to the particular causal role—such as necessity, or sufficiency, or component strength, or mechanism—counterfactual causality is simply that alteration of a factor from its factual state prevents or produces by any which way the event of interest.
↑ In epidemiology, the counterfactual causality is not deterministic, but probabilistic (Parascandola & Weed, "Causation in epidemiology", J Epidemiol Community Health, 2001; 55:905–12) PMID 11707485.
1 2 3 4 Schwarz, "Recent developments in string theory", Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 1998; 95:2750–7, esp Fig 1.
1 2 Ben-Menahem, Conventionalism (Cambridge U P, 2006), p 71.
↑ Instances of falsity limited Boyle's law to special cases, thus ideal gas law.
1 2 3 4 Newburgh et al, "Einstein, Perrin, and the reality of atoms", Am J Phys, 2006, p 478.
↑ For brief review of Boltmann's view, see ch 3 "Philipp Frank", § 1 "T S Kuhn's interview", in Blackmore et al, eds, Ernst Mach's Vienna 1895–1930 (Kluwer, 2001), p 63, as Frank was a student of Boltzmann soon after Mach's retirement. See "Notes", pp 79–80, #12 for views of Mach and of Ostwald, #13 for views of contemporary physicists generally, and #14 for views of Einstein. The more relevant here is #12: "Mach seems to have had several closely related opinions concerning atomism. First, he often thought the theory might be useful in physics as long as one did not believe in the reality of atoms. Second, he believed it was difficult to apply the atomic theory to both psychology and physics. Third, his own theory of elements is often called an 'atomistic theory' in psychology in contrast with both gestalt theory and a continuum theory of experience. Fourth, when critical of the reality of atoms, he normally meant the Greek sense of 'indivisible substance' and thought Boltzmann was being evasive by advocating divisible atoms or 'corpuscles' such as would become normal after J J Thomson and the distinction between electrons and nuclei. Fifth, he normally called physical atoms 'things of thought' and was very happy when Ostwald seemed to refute the reality of atoms in 1905. And sixth, after Ostwald returned to atomism in 1908, Mach continued to defend Ostwald's 'energeticist' alternative to atomism".
↑ Physicists had explained the electromagnetic field's energy as mechanical energy, like an ocean wave's bodily impact, not water droplets individually showered (Grandy, Everyday Quantum Reality, pp 22–23). In the 1890s, the problem of blackbody radiation was paradoxical until Max Planck theorized quantum exhibiting Planck's constant—a minimum unit of energy. The quanta were mysterious, not viewed as particles, yet simply as units of energy. Another paradox, however, was the photoelectric effect.
↑ Wolfson, Simply Einstein (W W Norton & Co, 2003), p 67.
↑ Newton's gravitational theory at 1687 had postulated absolute space and absolute time. To fit Young's transverse wave theory of light at 1804, space was theoretically filled with Fresnel's luminiferous aether at 1814. By Maxwell's electromagnetic field theory of 1865, light always holds a constant speed, which, however, must be relative to something, apparently to aether. Yet if light's speed is constant relative to aether, then a body's motion through aether would be relative to—thus vary in relation to—light's speed. Even Earth's vast speed, multiplied by experimental ingenuity with an interferometer by Michelson & Morley at 1887, revealed no apparent aether drift—light speed apparently constant, an absolute. Thus, both Newton's gravitational theory and Maxwell's electromagnetic theory each had its own relativity principle, yet the two were incompatible. For brief summary, see Wilczek, Lightness of Being (Basic Books, 2008), pp 78–80.
↑ Cordero, EPSA Philosophy of Science (Springer, 2012), pp 26–28.
↑ Hooper, Aether and Gravitation (Chapman & Hall, 1903), pp 122–23.
1 2 Lodge, "The ether of space", Sci Am Suppl, 1909; 67:202–03.
↑ Even Mach, who shunned all hypotheses beyond direct sensory experience, presumed an aether, required for motion to not violate mechanical philosophy's founding principle, No instant interaction at a distance (Einstein, "Ether", Sidelights (Methuen, 1922), pp 15–18).
↑ Rowlands, Oliver Lodge (Liverpool U P, 1990), pp 159–60: "Lodge's ether experiments have become part of the historical background leading up to the establishment of special relativity and their significance is usually seen in this context. Special relativity, it is stated, eliminated both the ether and the concept of absolute motion from physics. Two experiments were involved: that of Michelson and Morley, which showed that bodies do not move with respect to a stationary ether, and that of Lodge, which showed that moving bodies do not drag ether with them. With the emphasis on relativity, the Michelson–Morley experiment has come to be seen as the more significant of the two, and Lodge's experiment becomes something of a detail, a matter of eliminating the final, and less likely, possibility of a nonstationary, viscous, all-pervading medium. It could be argued that almost the exact opposite may have been the case. The Michelson–Morley experiment did not prove that there was no absolute motion, and it did not prove that there was no stationary ether. Its results—and the FitzGerald–Lorentz contraction—could have been predicted on Heaviside's, or even Maxwell's, theory, even if no experiment had ever taken place. The significance of the experiment, though considerable, is purely historical, and in no way factual. Lodge's experiment, on the other hand, showed that, if an ether existed, then its properties must be quite different from those imagined by mechanistic theorists. The ether which he always believed existed had to acquire entirely new properties as a result of this work".
↑ Mainly Hendrik Lorentz as well as Henri Poincaré modified electrodynamic theory and, more or less, developed special theory of relativity before Einstein did (Ohanian, Einstein's Mistakes, pp 281–85). Yet Einstein, free a thinker, took the next step and stated it, more elegantly, without aether (Torretti, Philosophy of Physics, p 180).
1 2 Tavel, Contemporary Physics (Rutgers U P, 2001), pp , 66.
↑ Introduced soon after Einstein explained Brownian motion, special relativity holds only in cases of inertial motion, that is, unaccelerated motion. Inertia is the state of a body experiencing no acceleration, whether by change in speed—either quickening or slowing—or by change in direction, and thus exhibits constant velocity, which is speed plus direction.
1 2 3 Cordero, EPSA Philosophy of Science (Springer, 2012), pp 29–30.
↑ To explain absolute light speed without aether, Einstein modeled that a body at motion in an electromagnetic field experiences length contraction and time dilation, which Lorentz and Poincaré had already modeled as Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction and Lorentz transformation but by hypothesizing dynamic states of the aether, whereas Einstein's special relativity was simply kinematic, that is, positing no causal mechanical explanation, simply describing positions, thus showing how to align measuring devices, namely, clocks and rods. (Ohanian, Einstein's Mistakes, pp 281–85).
↑ Ohanian, Einstein's Mistakes (W W Norton, 2008), pp 281–85.
↑ Newton's theory required absolute space and time.
↑ Buchen, "May 29, 1919", Wired, 2009.
↑ Crelinsten, Einstein's Jury (Princeton U P, 2006), p 28.
1 2 3 From 1925 to 1926, independently but nearly simultaneously, Werner Heisenberg as well as Erwin Schrödinger developed quantum mechanics (Zee in Feynman, QED, p xiv). Schrödinger introduced wave mechanics, whose wave function is discerned by a partial differential equation, now termed Schrödinger equation (p xiv). Heisenberg, who also stated the uncertainty principle, along with Max Born and Pascual Jordan introduced matrix mechanics, which rather confusingly talked of operators acting on quantum states (p xiv). If taken as causal mechanically explanatory, the two formalisms vividly disagree, and yet are indiscernible empirically, that is, when not used for interpretation, and taken as simply formalism (p xv).
1 2 Cushing, Quantum Mechanics (U Chicago P, 1994), pp 113–18.
1 2 Schrödinger's wave mechanics posed an electron's charge smeared across space as a waveform, later reinterpreted as the electron manifesting across space probabilistically but nowhere definitely while eventually building up that deterministic waveform. Heisenberg's matrix mechanics confusingly talked of operators acting on quantum states. Richard Feynman introduced QM's path integral formalism—interpretable as a particle traveling all paths imaginable, canceling themselves, leaving just one, the most efficient—predictively identical with Heisenberg's matrix formalism and with Schrödinger's wave formalism.
↑ Torretti, Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge U P, 1999), pp 393–95.
↑ Torretti, Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge U P, 1999), p 394.
1 2 3 Torretti, Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge U P, 1999), p 395.
↑ Recognition of strong force permitted Manhattan Project to engineer Little Boy and Fat Man, dropped on Japan, whereas effects of weak force were seen in its aftermath—radioactive fallout—of diverse health consequences.
1 2 3 4 5 6 Wilczek, "The persistence of ether", Phys Today, 1999; 52:11,13, p 13.
↑ The four, known fundamental interactions are gravitational, electromagnetic, weak nuclear, and strong nuclear.
↑ Grandy, Everyday Quantum Reality (Indiana U P, 2010), pp 24–25.
↑ Schweber, QED and the Men who Made it (Princeton U P, 1994).
↑ Feynman, QED (Princeton U P, 2006), p 5.
1 2 3 Torretti, Philosophy of Physics, (Cambridge U P, 1999), pp 395–96.
1 2 3 4 Cushing, Quantum Mechanics (U Chicago P, 1994), pp 158–59.
↑ Close, "Much ado about nothing", Nova, PBS/WGBH, 2012: "This new quantum mechanical view of nothing began to emerge in 1947, when Willis Lamb measured spectrum of hydrogen. The electron in a hydrogen atom cannot move wherever it pleases but instead is restricted to specific paths. This is analogous to climbing a ladder: You cannot end up at arbitrary heights above ground, only those where there are rungs to stand on. Quantum mechanics explains the spacing of the rungs on the atomic ladder and predicts the frequencies of radiation that are emitted or absorbed when an electron switches from one to another. According to the state of the art in 1947, which assumed the hydrogen atom to consist of just an electron, a proton, and an electric field, two of these rungs have identical energy. However, Lamb's measurements showed that these two rungs differ in energy by about one part in a million. What could be causing this tiny but significant difference? "When physicists drew up their simple picture of the atom, they had forgotten something: Nothing. Lamb had become the first person to observe experimentally that the vacuum is not empty, but is instead seething with ephemeral electrons and their anti-matter analogues, positrons. These electrons and positrons disappear almost instantaneously, but in their brief mayfly moment of existence they alter the shape of the atom's electromagnetic field slightly. This momentary interaction with the electron inside the hydrogen atom kicks one of the rungs of the ladder just a bit higher than it would be otherwise.
1 2 Riesselmann "Concept of ether in explaining forces", Inquiring Minds, Fermilab, 2008.
↑ Close, "Much ado about nothing", Nova, PBS/WGBH, 2012.
↑ On "historical examples of empirically successful theories that later turn out to be false", Okasha, Philosophy of Science (Oxford U P, 2002), p 65, concludes, "One that remains is the wave theory of light, first put forward by Christian Huygens in 1690. According to this theory, light consists of wave-like vibrations in an invisible medium called the ether, which was supposed to permeate the whole universe. (The rival to the wave theory was the particle theory of light, favoured by Newton, which held that light consists of very small particles emitted by the light source.) The wave theory was not widely accepted until the French physicist Auguste Fresnel formulated a mathematical version of the theory in 1815, and used it to predict some surprising new optical phenomena. Optical experiments confirmed Fresnel's predictions, convincing many 19th-century scientists that the wave theory of light must be true. But modern physics tells us that the theory is not true: there is no such thing as the ether, so light doesn't consist of vibrations in it. Again, we have an example of a false but empirically successful theory".
↑ Pigliucci, Answers for Aristotle (Basic Books, 2012), p 119: "But the antirealist will quickly point out that plenty of times in the past scientists have posited the existence of unobservables that were apparently necessary to explain a phenomenon, only to discover later on that such unobservables did not in fact exist. A classic case is the aether, a substance that was supposed by nineteenth-century physicists to permeate all space and make it possible for electromagnetic radiation (like light) to propagate. It was Einstein's special theory of relativity, proposed in 1905, that did away with the necessity of aether, and the concept has been relegated to the dustbin of scientific history ever since. The antirealists will relish pointing out that modern physics features a number of similarly unobservable entities, from quantum mechanical 'foam' to dark energy, and that the current crop of scientists seems just as confident about the latter two as their nineteenth-century counterparts were about aether".
↑ Wilczek, Lightness of Being (Basic Books, 2008), pp 78–80.
↑ Laughlin, A Different Universe (Basic Books, 2005), pp 120–21.
1 2 Einstein, "Ether", Sidelights (Methuen, 1922), pp 14–18.
↑ Lorentz aether was at absolute rest—acting on matter but not acted on by matter. Replacing it and resembling Ernst Mach's aether, Einstein aether is spacetime itself—which is the gravitational field—receiving motion from a body and transmitting it to other bodies while propagating at light speed, waving. An unobservable, however, Einstein aether is not a privileged reference frame—is not to be assigned a state of absolute motion or absolute rest.
↑ Relativity theory comprises both special relativity (SR) and general relativity (GR). Holding for inertial reference frames, SR is as a limited case of GR, which holds for all reference frames, both inertial and accelerated. In GR, all motion—inertial, accelerated, or gravitational—is consequent of the geometry of 3D space stretched onto the 1D axis of time. By GR, no force distinguishes acceleration from inertia. Inertial motion is consequence simply of uniform geometry of spacetime, acceleration is consequence simply of nonuniform geometry of spacetime, and gravitation is simply acceleration.
1 2 Laughlin, A Different Universe, (Basic Books, 2005), pp 120–21: "The word 'ether' has extremely negative connotations in theoretical physics because of its past association with opposition to relativity. This is unfortunate because, stripped of these connotations, it rather nicely captures the way most physicists actually think about the vacuum. ... Relativity actually says nothing about the existence or nonexistence of matter pervading the universe, only that any such matter must have relativistic symmetry. It turns out that such matter exists. About the time that relativity was becoming accepted, studies of radioactivity began showing that the empty vacuum of space had spectroscopic structure similar to that of ordinary quantum solids and fluids. Subsequent studies with large particle accelerators have now led us to understand that space is more like a piece of window glass than ideal Newtonian emptiness. It is filled with 'stuff' that is normally transparent but can be made visible by hitting it sufficiently hard to knock out a part. The modern concept of the vacuum of space, confirmed every day by experiment, is a relativistic ether. But we do not call it this because it is taboo".
↑ In Einstein's 4D spacetime, 3D space is stretched onto the 1D axis of time flow, which slows while space additionally contracts in the vicinity of mass or energy.
↑ Torretti, Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge U P, 1999), p 180.
↑ As an effective field theory, once adjusted to particular domains, Standard Model is predictively accurate until a certain, vast energy scale that is a cutoff, whereupon more fundamental phenomena—regulating the effective theory's modeled phenomena—would emerge. (Burgess & Moore, Standard Model, p xi; Wells, Effective Theories, pp 55–56).
1 2 3 Torretti, Philosophy of Physics (Cambridge U P, 1999), p 396.
1 2 3 Jegerlehner, "The Standard Model as a low-energy effective theory", arXiv:1304.7813: "We understand the SM as a low energy effective emergence of some unknown physical system—we may call it 'ether'—which is located at the Planck scale with the Planck length as a 'microscopic' length scale. Note that the cutoff, though very large, in any case is finite".
1 2 Wilczek, Lightness of Being (Basic Books, 2008), ch 8 "The grid (persistence of ether)", p 73: "For natural philosophy, the most important lesson we learn from QCD is that what we perceive as empty space is in reality a powerful medium whose activity molds the world. Other developments in modern physics reinforce and enrich that lesson. Later, as we explore the current frontiers, we'll see how the concept of 'empty' space as a rich, dynamic medium empowers our best thinking about how to achieve the unification of forces".
↑ Mass–energy equivalence is formalized in the equation E=mc2.
↑ Einstein, "Ether", Sidelights (Methuen, 1922), p 13: "[A]ccording to the special theory of relativity, both matter and radiation are but special forms of distributed energy, ponderable mass losing its isolation and appearing as a special form of energy".
↑ Braibant, Giacomelli & Spurio, Particles and Fundamental Interactions (Springer, 2012), p 2: "Any particle can be created in collisions between two high energy particles thanks to a process of transformation of energy in mass".
↑ Brian Greene explained, "People often have the wrong image of what happens inside the LHC, and I am just as guilty as anyone of perpetuating it. The machine does not smash together particles to pulverise them and see what is inside. Rather, it collides them at extremely high energy. Since, by dint of Einstein's famous equation, E=mc2, energy and mass are one and the same, the combined energy of the collision can be converted into a mass, in other words, a particle, that is heavier than either of the colliding protons. The more energy is involved in the collision, the heavier the particles that might come into being" [Avent, "The Q&A", Economist, 2012].
1 2 3 Kuhlmann, "Physicists debate", Sci Am, 2013.
↑ Norton, "Causation as folk science", in Price & Corry, eds, Mature Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality (Oxford U P, 2007), esp p 12.
↑ Fetzer, ch 3, in Fetzer, ed, Science, Explanation, and Rationality (Oxford U P, 2000), p 111.

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