Hamburg 2016 – wissenschaftliches Programm

Bereiche | Tage | Auswahl | Suche | Aktualisierungen | Downloads | Hilfe

AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 1: Philosophy of Physics 1

AGPhil 1.3: Vortrag

Montag, 29. Februar 2016, 17:45–18:15, VMP6 HS G

The Notion and Practice of Unification in Modern Physics — •Kian Salimkhani — Institut für Philosophie, Universität Bonn

Unification constitutes an important methodological principle of physics. However, it seems unclear what exactly we should mean by that. Should we understand it in a weaker sense, i.e. that physics (as all natural sciences) is implicitly concerned with unification as an abstraction from singular events, or do physicists, in a stronger sense, explicitly refer to some paradigm of unification? In other words: Are particular questions and programs at the frontier of physical research solely generated by the assumption of some kind of unity of nature?

Indeed, it is often argued that all approaches to Quantum Gravity (QG) rest on such an external paradigm. Not only does it seem to be the case that "the real justification for quantizing gravity has yet to be articulated" (Mattingly, 2005), one could even conjecture "that the conceptual disunity of the two theories reflects a disunity in nature" (Wüthrich, 2005).

On the contrary, I claim that modern high energy physics does not need to rely on such an explicit methodological principle in addition - or even opposition - to empirical adequacy, but that in particular the quest for a theory of QG should be understood as a result of an immanent analysis of our best theoretical framework, namely quantum field theory.

Mattingly (2005), Is Quantum Gravity Necessary? Wüthrich (2005), To Quantize or Not to Quantize.