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AGPhil: Arbeitsgruppe Philosophie der Physik

AGPhil 10: Particle Physics 1

AGPhil 10.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 20, 2024, 16:00–16:30, PTB SR AvHB

A comparative computational analysis of epistemic markers in astrophysics and particle physics using contextualized word embeddings — •Arno Simons, Adrian Wüthrich, and Michael Zichert — Technische Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany

We compare the different meanings and nuances of observation, experimentation and simulation in astrophysics and high-energy physics (HEP) over a 30-year period, spanning from 1992 to 2022. In particular, we use contextualized word embeddings trained on physics language to track semantic shifts in the meanings of these concepts in a corpus of over 600K physics articles from the arxiv preprint server. Our analysis is inspired, first, by recent empirical studies on the actual usage of epistemic concepts in science (Malaterre and Léonard 2023; Mizrahi 2022; Overton 2013) and, second, by ongoing debates in philosophy of physics on how astrophysics and HEP differ in their epistemic strategies, especially relating to the concepts we investigate (Ableson 2023; Karaca 2023; Jacquart 2022; Heidler 2017). In both these literatures, the meanings of concepts such as observation, experiment and simulation, are considered good indicators, or “markers”, of the epistemic strategies used in different fields of physics or science more broadly. Despite our basic confidence in the fruitfulness of our computational and AI-based approach, we also critically discuss its applicability and its usefulness for the future of an empirical philosophy of science.

Keywords: contextualized word embeddings; astrophysics; high-energy physics (HEP); digital humanities; epistemology