Title

Reflections on the History and Epistemology of Modern Physics: Methods and Results

Abstract Roundtable

Each period of History, not restricted to science, has its particularities. One doesn't work on Antiquity, practicing doxography, as one might with manuscripts or incunables of the Middle Ages and early Renaissance. Books differ from articles, and so on. But in History and Epistemology of science, for all these periods, there is a consensus within the scientific community about what is true science and what is not, on what is correct and what is false. Things are different in the history of physics after 1925 and the discovery of the principle of uncertainty: such a consensus doesn't exist any more or, to put it in a different way, the "consensus" called the "Copenhagen interpretation" leaves many questions open. Indeed, scientists often have to wait more than half a century to get their theoretical proposals confirmed by experiment. This situation completely changes the way of doing history and leads even to the question: Is it possible to do History and Epistemology of that period without in effect doing quantum mechanics? The fact that quantum mechanics assumes the use of probabilities not only leads to questions about determinism but also to a more fundamental question: do we really understand this physics ? Furthermore, what does it mean to understand?

Contact

patricia.radelet@uclouvain.be