No-Go Theorems: What Are They Good For?

No-go theorems have played an important role in the development and assessment of scientific theories. They have stopped whole research programs and have given rise to strong ontological commitments. Given the importance they obviously have had in physics and philosophy of physics and the huge amount of literature on the consequences of specific no-go theorems, there has been relatively little attention to the more abstract assessment of no-go theorems as a tool in theory development. We will here provide this abstract assessment of no-go theorems and conclude that the methodological implications one may draw from no-go theorems are in disagreement with the implications that have often been drawn from them in the history of science.Comment: 34 page

Assessing Scientific Theories: The Bayesian Approach

Scientific theories are used for a variety of purposes. For example, physical theories such as classical mechanics and electrodynamics have important applications in engineering and technology, and we trust that this results in useful machines, stable bridges, and the like. Similarly, theories such as quantum mechanics and relativity theory have many applications as well. Beyond that, these theories provide us with an understanding of the world and address fundamental questions about space, time, and matter. Here we trust that the answers scientific theories give are reliable and that we have good reason to believe that the features of the world are similar to what the theories say about them. But why do we trust scientific theories, and what counts as evidence in favor of them

Symmetry breaking

A brief introduction to the physics and philosophy of symmetry breaking

On the Empirical Consequences of the AdS/CFT Duality

We provide an analysis of the empirical consequences of the AdS/CFT duality with reference to the application of the duality in a fundamental theory, effective theory and instrumental context. Analysis of the first two contexts is intended to serve as a guide to the potential empirical and ontological status of gauge/gravity dualities as descriptions of actual physics at the Planck scale. The third context is directly connected to the use of AdS/CFT to describe real quark-gluon plasmas. In the latter context, we find that neither of the two duals are confirmed by the empirical data.Comment: 15 pages + abstract, references. Submitted to "Beyond Spacetime" volum

Hawking Radiation and Analogue Experiments: A Bayesian Analysis

We present a Bayesian analysis of the epistemology of analogue experiments with particular reference to Hawking radiation. First, we prove that such experiments can be confirmatory in Bayesian terms based upon appeal to 'universality arguments'. Second, we provide a formal model for the scaling behaviour of the confirmation measure for multiple distinct realisations of the analogue system and isolate a generic saturation feature. Finally, we demonstrate that different potential analogue realisations could provide different levels of confirmation. Our results provide a basis both to formalise the epistemic value of analogue experiments that have been conducted and to advise scientists as to the respective epistemic value of future analogue experiments.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure

Correction to: Editorial: symmetries and asymmetries in physics

The article Editorial: symmetries and asymmetries in physics, written by Radin Dardashti, Mathias Frisch, Giovanni Valente, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal on 3 July 2020 without open access. With the author(s)’ decision to opt for Open Choice the copyright of the article changed on 16 June 2021 to © The Author(s) 2021 and the article is forthwith distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution

Confirmation via Analogue Simulation:What Dumb Holes Could Tell Us about Gravity

In this article we argue for the existence of ‘analogue simulation ’ as a novel form of scientific inference with the potential to be confirmatory. This notion is distinct from the modes of analogical reasoning detailed in the literature, and draws inspiration from fluid dynamical ‘dumb hole ’ analogues to gravitational black holes. For that case, which is considered in detail, we defend the claim that the phenomena of gravitational Hawking radiation could be confirmed in the case that its counterpart is detected within experi-ments conducted on diverse realizations of the analogue model. A prospectus is given for further potential cases of analogue simulation in contemporary science

Symmetry breaking

A brief introduction to the physics and philosophy of symmetry breaking