Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 7: Philosophy of Science

AGPhil 7.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 18:15–18:45, H 2033

An odd piece of progress: On proposals for a new SI — •Wolfgang Pietsch — Carl von Linde-Akademie, TU München, Germany

Progress in physics is usually supposed to be driven by evidence and thus objective. We will present a case study that violates this intuition but nevertheless regards the very core of physics. It concerns a recent proposal of the major metrology institutes to redefine four of the SI base units, namely kilogram, ampere, mole, and kelvin. We will attempt to make sense of this episode within a general framework of scientific evolution - drawing mainly on the work of the historian of science Thomas Kuhn. The odd features can be traced back to the fact that the episode exhibits characteristics both of normal science and of a scientific revolution.