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The Non-Miraculous Success of Formal Analogies in Quantum Theories

2020· book-chapter· en· W2908133778 on OpenAlexafffund
Doreen Fraser

Bibliographic record

VenueOxford University Press eBooks · 2020
Typebook-chapter
Languageen
FieldArts and Humanities
TopicPhilosophy and History of Science
Canadian institutionsUniversity of Waterloo
FundersSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
KeywordsEpistemologyScientific realismArgument (complex analysis)CounterexampleRealismHiggs bosonCritical realism (philosophy of perception)Quantum nonlocalityPhilosophyPhilosophy of scienceScientific theoryTheoretical physicsMathematicsQuantumPhysicsQuantum mechanicsQuantum entanglement

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

The Higgs model was developed using purely formal analogies to models of superconductivity. This is in contrast to historical case studies such as the development of electromagnetism, which employed physical analogies. As a result, quantum case studies such as the development of the Higgs model carry new lessons for the scientific (anti-)realism debate. Chapter 13 argues that, by breaking the connection between success and approximate truth, the use of purely formal analogies is a counterexample to two prominent versions of the ‘No Miracles’ Argument (NMA) for scientific realism: Stathis Psillos’ Refined Explanationist Defense of Realism and the Argument from History of Science for structural realism. The NMA is undermined, but the success of the Higgs model is not miraculous because there is a naturalistically acceptable explanation for its success that does not invoke approximate truth. The chapter also suggests some possible strategies for adapting to the counterexample for scientific realists who wish to hold on to the NMA in some form.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.002
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.003
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesScience and technology studies
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Theoretical or conceptual · Consensus signal: Theoretical or conceptual
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: none
Teacher disagreement score0.998
Threshold uncertainty score0.024

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0020.003
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.001
Science and technology studies0.0020.014
Scholarly communication0.0030.007
Open science0.0010.002
Research integrity0.0010.004
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0070.001

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.035
GPT teacher head0.194
Teacher spread0.158 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

Study designTheoretical or conceptual
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations4
Published2020
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

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Same venueOxford University Press eBooksSame topicPhilosophy and History of ScienceFrench-language works237,207