Jena 2013 – scientific programme

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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 6: Models, Theories, Explanation

AGPhil 6.2: Talk

Tuesday, February 26, 2013, 17:15–17:45, SR 113

Explanatory Hypotheses Formation and the Anomalous β Spectrum — •Tjerk Gauderis — Centre for Logic and Philosophy of Science, Ghent University, Belgium

Between 1928 and 1934, a persevering anomaly mystified the physics community: while alpha decay behaved perfectly according to the new quantum mechanics, the energy of electrons emitted in beta decay displayed a broad continuous spectrum. This puzzle invoked a lively debate among the most established physicists at the time. But the curious thing was that they all suggested hypotheses of very different formal types: Rutherford and Chadwick thought of varying internal energies, Bohr suggested to restrict the energy conservation principle, Heisenberg tinkered with a new quantization of space, and Pauli suggested the existence of a new elementary particle - all these hypotheses being radical and highly controversial.

In physics, an anomalous experimental result can trigger the formation of formally very different hypotheses. A scientist confronted with such a result has no strict guidelines to help her decide whether she should explain this result by withdrawing or adapting a constraint (e.g. a law) of the current theory, or by presupposing the existence of a hitherto unobserved entity (e.g. a particle) that makes the anomaly fit within that theory. In this talk I aim to gain some insights how scientists make this choice, by examining in the above case study how the choice of the various mentioned physicists depended on their previous experiences and their specific perception of the problem.