Particle metaphysics : a critical account of subatomic reality /

This work could, and should, change the direction of current philosophy of science. Accomplished physicist-philosopher Falkenburg (Universitat Dortmund, Germany) has constructed a significant metaphysical framework in which to evaluate the knowledge claims of empirical particle physics. Explicitly based on Kant's architectonic, appropriate given the deterioration of 20th-century antimetaphysical logical empiricism, Falkenburg's work surveys the development of particle physics from the electron to the quark (and beyond to virtual and quasi particles). Displaying the accumulation of interacting heuristics employed to understand the ontological status of kinds of "particles," Falkenburg's modifications of Kant's perspective (here called "modal realism") allows categorization of the paralogisms of the current realism-antirealism debates, demonstrates the simple wave-particle dualism to be a dialectic illusion, delimits the implications of nonlocality, and constructs a generalized correspondence principle (derived from Bohr) that resolves Kuhn's incommensurability dilemmas with a semantic unification of competing quantum and classical characterizations. Aside from enormous philosophical fecundity, the particle physics could enhance physics courses, particularly in motivating difficult issues in scattering theory and scale invariance (there is a relevant appendix on the Buckingham Pi theorem). Urgently recommended to all philosophers of science and interested physicists. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. P. D. Skiff Bard College