The Epistemology of Microphysics
4 days ago
- #epistemology
- #Thomism
- #microphysics
- Microphysics studies molecules, atoms, and elementary particles, with significant epistemological insights from its success and recent slowdown.
- Progress has slowed due to dominance of untestable mathematical constructs embraced for aesthetic reasons, per critics like Sabine Hossenfelder.
- Thomistic philosophy reveals that both success and frustrations stem from epistemological roots, paralleling limits of reason in knowing God.
- Knowledge of micro-world involves retroductive inference (inference to best explanation), not just induction or deduction, as shown by Norwood Russell Hanson.
- Mathematical descriptions strip particles of ordinary qualities (e.g., color, position), making them unpicturable and abstract, unlike classical billiard-ball models.
- Analogies and models (e.g., particles, waves, strings) are crucial for theorizing, with positive, negative, and neutral analogies guiding scientific extension, per Mary Hesse.
- Jacques Maritain emphasizes physics gives mathematical 'substitutes' for essences, not direct ontological natures, aligning with epistemic structural realism.
- Parallel exists between Thomistic triplex via (causality, negation, eminence) in theology and microphysics: both reason from observed effects to unobservable causes with limits.
- Deeper into microstructure, phenomena become marginalized, with theory distant from empirical evidence, as in string theory, risking untestable rationalist metaphysics.
- Aesthetic considerations (beauty, symmetry) in physics are unreliable without empirical basis, reflecting transcendental unity but prone to error without experimental verification.