Science Advancing Philosophy:

http://www.theguardian.com/science/...6/the-philosophy-of-the-large-hadron-collider
The Philosophy of the Large Hadron Collider:

"There have been many tedious discussions about the value of philosophy for modern science. I find it much more interesting to ask if and in what way modern science can advance philosophy"

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Computer simulations are essential for exploring physics at the LHC. Photograph: ATLAS/CERN
Michael Krämer

Saturday 6 June 2015 17.41 AESTLast modified on Tuesday 9 June 201517.36 AEST

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Organization for Nuclear Research CERN in Geneva is the world’s largest and most powerful particle accelerator and possibly the most complex scientific instrument ever built. The LHC has just begun its second three-year run, at the record-breaking collision energy of 13 TeV. About 10,000 scientists from 60 countries will search for new phenomena beyond the Standard Model of particle physics, in pursuit of a simple, beautiful and all-encompassing theory of nature.

The sheer complexity of the LHC experiments, and of LHC data acquisition and processing, poses tremendous challenges and affects the way knowledge is acquired. Since any analysis and interpretation of LHC data involves theoretical models and computer simulations, can one still consider such experimental results indisputable facts of nature? And given the strong theoretical bias in data selection, can the LHC explore unknown territory, or are we limited to search for the “known unknowns”? And what if we look in the wrong places? Maybe our idea of a simple and yet all-encompassing is flawed, and new physics could show up in some unexpected way? Could one not perform searches for new physics at the LHC in a model-independent way?

The relationship between computer simulations and experiment, between theories and data, and the role of models in modern particle physics are scientific issues. But they are also key questions of philosophy of science, and they have been debated at the recent interdisciplinary workshop on ‘Models, simulations and data at LHC’, organised by Michela Massimi at Edinburgh University.

Jon Butterworth from UCL set the stage for the workshop by outlining the quantity and nature of the data acquired by the LHC. Jon discussed the use of simulations - both of the detectors and of the unknown or known underlying physics - in defining and making measurements. Given the importance of simulations and theory in LHC data taking and analysis, should we still consider the LHC an exploratory experiment? Koray Karaca from Wuppertal argued that even though the physics program of the LHC and the set-up of the experiments is not independent of theory, there is a significant element of exploration at the LHC, an exploration that is strategy – rather than theory – driven.

The challenge of dealing with “really big data” and computer simulations at the LHC has been addressed by Margaret Morrison from the University of Toronto. Margaret argued that the enormous amount of data collected and analysed at the LHC has transformed the notion of validation for computer simulations and introduced methodological changes which raise various new epistemological issues.

I have been exploring so-called simplified models for new physics searches at the LHC. Such models focus on specific experimental signatures that could reveal physics beyond the Standard Model, and they characterise these signatures with a minimal set of new particles and interactions in a more model-independent way. Simplified models are thus some kind of mediator between experiment and theory, and they allow physicists to (learn to!) explore the space of viable theories and experimental signatures. However, the use of simplified models also raises various epistemological questions: How do we choose the right simplified models? How do simplified models connect to theory? And what does a simplified model actually explain and how?

There have been many tedious and futile discussions about the value of philosophy for modern science. I find it much more interesting and fruitful to ask if and in what way modern science can advance philosophy. The complexity, the new challenges and the new methods that arise in modern science in general - and at the LHC in particular - raise a number of questions that concern core issues of philosophy of science: what are the methods of acquiring knowledge, what is the role of models, and how does the intricate relationship between theory, computer simulations and experimental data work? The LHC has been built for fundamental physics, but it will also challenge and advance the philosophy, sociology and history of science!

Michael Krämer is a theoretical particle physicist at the RWTH Aachen University and member of a research collaboration on the Epistemology of the LHC. He is grateful to Margaret Morrison for many enlightening discussions on models, football and whisky.

 

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http://home.web.cern.ch/about/updates/2015/06/lhc-experiments-back-business-record-energy
LHC experiments back in business at record energy
Cian O'Luanaigh on 3 Jun 2015. Last updated 5 Jun 2015, 11.01.
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In the CERN Control Centre, the LHC operations team as well as members of CERN management applaud the announcement of stable beams this morning at 10.40am (Image: Maximilien Brice/CERN) more images

The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) started delivering physics data today for the first time in 27 months. After an almost two year shutdown and several months re-commissioning, the LHC is now providing collisions to all of its experiments at the unprecedented energy of 13 TeV, almost double the collision energy of its first run. This marks the start of season 2 at the LHC, opening the way to new discoveries. The LHC will now run round the clock for the next three years.

“With the LHC back in the collision-production mode, we celebrate the end of two months of beam commissioning,” said CERN Director of Accelerators and Technology Frédérick Bordry. “It is a great accomplishment and a rewarding moment for all of the teams involved in the work performed during the long shutdown of the LHC, in the powering tests and in the beam commissioning process. All these people have dedicated so much of their time to making this happen.”

Today at 10.40am, the LHC operators declared “stable beams”, the signal for the LHC experiments that they can start taking data. Beams are made of “trains” of proton bunches moving at almost the speed of light around the 27 kilometre ring of the LHC. These so-called bunch trains circulate in opposite directions, guided by powerful superconducting magnets. Today the LHC was filled with 6 bunches each containing around 100 billion protons. This rate will be progressively increased as the run goes on to 2808 bunches per beam, allowing the LHC to produce up to 1 billion collisions per second.

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Interesting pad .

Both though advance simultaneously

 

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The simple and the complex go hand in hand .

For example : the hydrogen atom is simplest thing I know . The name Hydrogen is the simplicity of the atom , Hydrogen . The complexity is the UNDERSTANDING of the atom Hydrogen.

 

Hydrogen is called Hydrogen because it creates water when it's burned.

 

Your point ?

 

Frankly, it doesn't appear to me that this thesis has anything to do with what is discussed in the rest of the article...or, perhaps, is misleading. The issue raised in the article is over-interpretation of data due to the need to filter and interpret large amounts of data. This is a well established and attacked problem in science and the only "philosophy" improved filtering advances is the philosophy of science itself - and that's only a vaguely philosophical issue. It's mostly just math. Instead, I was expecting from that thesis for the article to be about something like QM interpretation, which is philosophical interpretation of physics results and perhaps limitations of them.

 

Another consideration that is not addressed, in terms of collider data, is most materials found in nature have various phases or states, that are a function of temperature and pressure. Collider data follows an isobar (constant pressure) to higher and higher energy, but it is always done at low earth surface pressure. This approach will not define sub particle phases that might occur in high pressure, like in a neutron star, where the sub particle configurations needed to define protons, can no longer exist.

For an analogous example, at very high pressure and temperature, water can become a solid metal with over double its normal density. At low pressure, like the surface of the earth, you cannot make metallic water, at any temperature, high or low. If we stayed at earth surface pressure, you would never know this phase existed.

The latest colliders are now using the most extreme temperatures of all time, but they but lack the pressure needed to simulate even sub particle behavior in neutron density phases. These high pressure phases might well tell us other things about sub particles which no model has yet predicted. It is arrogant to think isobar data at extreme energy/temperature is the whole enchilada. Philosophy is being used, by me, to do a conceptual fact check based on the trends found in the rest of known nature.

If one set up a collider experiment, within the core of a neuron star, the first thing one would notice is this environment is way too dense and tight to get any room for much velocity. Under extreme pressure, kinetic energy and therefore special relativity, is less of a factor. I would conclude that some of the particle effect, ay low pressure, is connected to relativistic mass/energy, which would make much less of a contribution at extreme pressure. If this case, it would be more driven by GR. In the middle of pressure, we may have both SR and GR contributions.

 

Yes I struggle with this a bit too. It seems to me that one only has a philosophical problem if the experimental results obtained are so heavily processed that they end up no longer capable of testing the predictions of the theoretical models. So long as a model can make predictions that can be shown to be either right or wrong by the experiments, then it seem to me it doesn't pose a new philosophical problem.

 

One would expect science and philosophy to influence each other. They aren't entirely separate subjects after all, and 'science' is just the recent (post 19th century) name given to what was previously called 'natural philosophy'.

The philosophy of science will obviously have to pay attention to what actual scientists are doing. (They don't all do the same thing.) The practice of science suggest new issues for metaphysics, epistemology, ethics (with things like evolutionary ethics), the philosophy of mind (the impact of neuroscience), the philosophy of mathematics (applied mathematics and statistics), and more.

And conversely, philosophy casts light on the fundamental assumptions that go into scientific work.

 

True

 

What I say doesn't mean much for the science but ........... The comments by the author bore me to sleep. Worrying whether you're missing something because we have so much data to analyze.

 

That last part isn't really true. The name changed because the subject evolved into something fundamentally different, leaving natural philosophy and many other forms essentially extinct. Today, philosophy plays almost no role in science and very little role in anything else (in terms of new development of ideas, not learning history).

 

Agree with your first part, but I think your second may be rather a sweeping statement. Philosophical ideas have played quite a role (a malign one, in my opinion) recently in literary criticism, for example (Derrida etc).

And I think we all call on well established philosophy of science whenever we deal with people who do not have an understanding of the nature of science (primacy of observation, the need for objectivity and reproducibility, predictive models, lack of provability of hypotheses, etc). In fact I would go further and suggest that a better understanding of the philosophy of science, by society generally, would resolve a lot of misunderstandings about science.

 

So how would you characterize whatever differences you believe exist? And how could you do so without engaging in philosophy?

The idea that there is some clear criterion that distinguishes science from everything that isn't science, is a philosophical proposition. The problem of characterizing that criterion is known as the demarcation problem.

It's ironic that a number of Sciforums participants spend less time discussing the kind of scientific issues that practicing scientists concern themselves with, then they do arguing at the margins with those who they perceive as being "deniers", proponents of "pseudo-science" or "anti-science", or "religionists". And our holy-warriors fight their battles blissfully unaware that what they are doing is philosophy more than it's science.

Unless "science" is natural philosophy in new guise.

Philosophy is the investigation of the most basic underlying principles and assumptions of any intellectual or practical subject. In many everyday activities (even everyday scientific activities) one can ignore the assumptions implicit in what one is doing and assume that they are already understood and settled. But when problem situations arise, like the advent of relativity and quantum mechanics in the early 20th century, scientists often have to revisit their assumptions. Einstein wrote very clearly about the need to do this.

Sciforums participants often pose as champions of logic (in most cases without ever having studied the subject). Logic is ultimately about inference. Deductive inference raises questions about what connects premises to conclusions, about what logical necessity is and how we recognize it. That's obviously relevant to the foundations of mathematics. (Science often just assumes mathematics.) Inductive inference raises the problem of how finite data sets (such as experimental results) can ever justify universal conclusions (such as 'laws of physics').

People talk blithely about things like belief, knowledge, truth and evidence. But what precisely are each of these things? How do they fit together?

A lot is said about scientific explanation. So what is really happening when scientists explain something? (That can't just be assumed or taken for granted, it needs to be understood.)

There's a widespread assumption that the language of scientific theories is language about the world, that things like the strings of 'string theory' really exist in some literal sense and aren't just mathematical conveniences that are helpful in predicting experimental results. That introduces a whole nest of philosophical problems surrounding scientific realism and instrumentalism.

Sciforums participants often seem to champion a strong metaphysical belief in physicalism. This is the idea that physical reality is the only reality there is. That philosophical thesis needs to be explained and justified.

We often see scientific reductionism, where problematic aspects of reality (such as life) is reduced to aspects of reality that are perceived as more fundamental (such as chemistry, which in turn is reduced to physics). Understanding that process, how it's done and whether anything is lost or gained by doing it, is philosophy at work.

And we often see scientists using concepts like substance and properties, which were inherited from the Greeks and might not be the best ways to conceive of physical realities. Quantum mechanics provides good illustrations of that.

This list of philosophical issues associated with the fundamentals of science could be extended indefinitely (the regularity of nature and the applicability of mathematics to it, models, probabilities, possibilities, symmetry principles, observation and experiment, abduction,hypothesis generation, confirmation, theoretical under-determination, natural selection, teleological explanation in biology, causality, time and change, determinism, understanding mind and consciousness, the relation of the social to the natural sciences, the value of science...)

 

Very much agree. I think actually very few of us really treat the world entirely and solely according to the avowedly physicalist criteria of natural science. I think nearly all of us draw on other ways of making sense of our perceptions and experiences in non-scientific contexts, in our interpersonal and social interactions and in our appreciation of the arts, for example. The scientific approach to the world is a particular (physicalist) stance, adopted for the specific and sole purpose of understanding nature. It is extraordinarily successful at doing that and people quite rightly fight against attempts to contaminate it with inappropriate ideas that cloud the process. But this way of thinking is by no means the only valid approach to the world: it is a question of horses for courses. Any scientist knows that we pick different models of reality for different purposes within science itself, so acknowledging this is in no way inconsistent or hypocritical.

 

@ Yazata Post #15

Grok'd !

 

Never heard of him. What does that tell you?

Clearly. That's the issue we are currently discussing.

 

Simply put, science is a method for investigation of the natural world, whereas philosophy is investigation of the human mind -- which, of course (as you mention below) also includes figuring out how to use the human mind to investigate the natural world (You're just mixing the development of the method with the application of the method).

On a nuts-and-bolts/everday basis, the difference is that philosophers essentially believe you can figure out all things using your mind alone whereas scientists actually investigate the natural world itself (rigorous observation and experimentation), to figure out how it works.

Aristotle came to several famous false conclusions because of this difference, such as reasoning that all objects fall at rates proportional to their speed and that flies have 4 legs like a table. The fact that he never bothered to check the fly, especially, may be laughable today, but in his time we have to remember that people simply hadn't explored the nature of thought enough to understand how to think in a useful way. But once it was figured-out (largely by Galileo, not by philosophers), the time when philosophy was considered to be a useful way to investigate the natural world came to an abrupt and spectacular end, sparking the Scientific Revolution.

This is why active philosophical investigation of the natural world today pretty much only occurrs in the gaps in science. Until the science is figured-out, there is room to speculate. But once the science is figured-out, the philosophy that served simply as a placeholder is discarded.

Yes. So what? That isn't a relevant issue -- it's like you think that makes philosophy permanently intertwined with science and therefore constantly useful and relevant. It doesn't.

Again, philosophy was indeed needed to establish the scientific method. But once established, there was little left for philosophy to do. To say it again: philosophy helped establish the method but takes no role in the execution of the method. To use a sports analogy, the rules of golf were created by a committee of people who were precursors to modern golfers, centuries ago. Since then, there is little left for a rules committee to do. The committee members are not playing competitive golf (in their capacity as committee members).

Trust me: none of the scientists here are unaware that arguing with an anti-scientist involves little or no science. The only irony I see on that is due to the name of the forum, not the actions of the scientist members: other science forums that are actually science forums would just shut down these discussions and/or ban you guys.

That's really neither here nor there, though. No amount of arguing of philosophy by non-scientists will ever change how science works, so its all futile anyway. Frankly, I think some of the attitude we science types get here is due to the bitterness of knowing that regardless of the philosophy presented here, none of that has any relevance to our day-to-day work: Futility/irrelevance is ego-bruising.

But hey; as your last few sections seem to indicate, you already knew all that stuff anyway - you just seem to enjoy arguing against things you actually know, for some reason. Minor caveat in that though:

You're reading that issue wrong: that's just philosophical thinking standing in the way of science, not playing a role in its development. Special Relativity, for example, probably took longer to develop than it should have because people let pre-existing philosophical objections block their ability to apply objective science to the evidence they had in front of them (not a big issue - not as bad as the millenia during which worship of Aristotle and his assumptions blocked the start of science itself). It wasn't just a change in philosophy that was required to put SR together, it was a discarding of philosophy that was required. "Every wave needs a medium" was philosophically generated*. "Light does not require a medium (in the previous sense)" is not new philosophy it is science replacing philosophy.

So to with QM: there are philosophical questions that arise about the nature of reality with QM. So what? Science works better if such questions are simply ignored and as a result of not letting those irrelevancies get in the way, QM has become about the most successful scientific theory of all time.

Back to Aristotle and his 4-legged fly, to reiterate: philosophy deals in a reality that necessarily exists only in a person's head whereas science deals with external reality. As such, when it comes to the actual answers about the nature of reality, philosophy has mostly just stood in the way of discovering the answers.

*Note, we've talked before about the human mind being a "belief engine". The problem with the belief engine is that once beliefs are geneated, they are hard to get rid of. For example, once we figured-out how waves worked, we assumed that anything resembling a wave was a wave and worked the same way. Over time, the belief becomes aesthetically pleasing and comfortable, making it actually cause pain to discard it -- blocking the discovery of SR. This is an ongoing problem in science, but I think science is getting better at dealing with it due to the recognition in QM that the philosophy should not be confused with or allowed to stand in the way of the science.

 

By the way, there is nothing inherrently wrong with the fact that philosophical development is largely obsolete/extinct: I'd be excited if we ever reached that point with science. Stephen Hawking even had a bet that we'd reach that point soon for physics.