Abstract
Recent developments in high-energy physics have not been encouraging for anyone interested in the problem of elementarity. Not only has the number of so-called elementary particles increased rapidly during the past few years — from less than a half dozen to thirty, then to over a hundred — but also the propriety of referring to these as ‘elementary’ has been increasingly questioned.1 Part of the latter concern arises from the great number of particles, for it would seem that the elements of which things are constituted should be few in number. A more puzzling paradox arises from the fact that many of the particles being discussed by physicists, particularly those referred to as strongly interacting particles, seem in some sense to be composites of one another.2
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References
See Chen Ning Yang, Elementary Particles: A Short History of Some Discoveries in Atomic Physics, Princeton 1962; also G. F. Chew, M. G.ll-Mann, and A. H. Rosenfeld, ‘Strongly Interacting Particles’, Scientific American 210 (1964) 74–93.
See G. F. Chew, M. Gell-Mann, and A. H. Rosenfeld, loc. cit., p. 91.
Studies worthy of mention include B. Mayo, ‘The Existence of Theoretical Entities’, Science News 32 (1954) 7–18; ‘More about Theoretical Entities’, ibid. 39 (1956) 42–55; and J. J. C. Smart, ‘The Reality of Theoretical Entities’, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 34 (1956) 1–12.
An introductory study is that of R. B. Braithwaite, Scientific Explanation, New York 1953. (Reprint, 1959.)
The initial statement of these questions is to be found in Aristotle, Analytica Posterior a, Bk. I, ch. 1–2.
P. K. Feyerabend explains this distinction in his ‘Das Problem der Existenz theoretischer Entitäten’, in Probleme der Wissenschafts Theorie: Festschrift für Victor Kraft, Vienna 1960, pp. 35–72.
Laws and Theories in the Physical Sciences’, in Philosophy of Science, (eds. A. Danto and S. Morgenbesser ), New York 1960, p. 215.
See H. Feigl and G. Maxwell (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. Ill, Minneapolis 1962, for representative essays, as well as other works cited below.
Minnesota Studies, vol. Ill, p. vii.
The Ontological Status of Theoretical Entities’, ibid., pp. 14–15.
Ibid., pp. 7–8.
Ibid., p. 9.
Ibid.
Ibid., pp. 110–11.
The Structure of Science: Problems in the Logic of Scientific Explanation, New York 1961, pp. 150–151.
Ibid., p. 151.
Cf. ibid., pp. 52, 53.
The Philosophy of Science: An Introduction, New York 1953, pp. 137–138 [emphasis added].
See W. Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy: The Revolution in Modern Science, New York 1958, pp. 69–70.
The Concept of the Positron, Cambridge 1963, pp. 42–49.
Ibid., p. 43.
Ibid., p. 42.
Ibid., pp. 49–53.
Ibid., p. 45.
Ibid., p. 57.
Ibid., p. 47.
The classical loci in Aristotle are Metaphysics, Bk. V, ch. 3 (1014a 27–35); De caelo et mundo, Bk. III, ch. 3 (302a 16–19); and De generatione et corruptione, Bk. II, ch. 1–8 (328b 25 — 335a 24). For a survey of the early mediaeval development of Aristotelian teaching, see R. McKeon, ‘Medicine and Philosophy in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries: The Problem of the Elements’, The Thomist 24 (1961) 211–256.
The classical study on Theodoric is that of E. Krebs, Meister Dietrich, sein Leben, seine Werke, seine Wissenschaft (Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophie und Theologie des Mittelalters, 5, nos. 5–6) (Munster i. W. 1906 ).
For a detailed description of Theodoric’s optical researches, see C. B. Boyer, The Rainbow: From Myth to Mathematics, New York 1959, pp. 110–124; A. C. Crombie, Robert Grosseteste and the Origins of Experimental Science, Oxford 1953, pp. 223–259; and W. A. Wallace, The Scientific Methodology ofTheodoric of Freiberg, Fribourg 1959, pp. 131–248.
In this connection, see W. A. Wallace, ‘Theodoric of Freiberg on the Structure of Matter’, in Proceedings of the Tenth International Congress of History of Science, Ithaca, N. Y., 1962, Paris 1964, Vol. I, pp. 591–597; also Scientific Methodology, pp. 105–127. (See note 29.)
Scientific Methodology, p. 107.
Aristotle presented two analyses whereby a person may come to a knowledge of primary matter, one pertaining to metaphysics and the other to natural philosophy. For a modern explanation of the first type of analysis, see Ernan McMullin, ‘Matter as a Principle’, in The Concept of Matter (ed. E. McMullin), Notre Dame 1963, pp. 169–208; for a similar account of the second type, see V. E. Smith, The General Science of Nature, Milwaukee 1958, pp. 52–122.
Thus matter and form are constituent principles of corporeal substance and are related to each other as potency and act; for an explanation of this relationship, see V. E. Smith, op. cit., pp. 111–114.
Scientific Methodology, p. 111.
Ibid., p. 116.
Ibid., p. 115.
The diagram reproduced in the text is to be found in the only known manuscript version of Theodoric’s De miscibilibus in mixto, viz, Cod. Vat. Lat. 2183, fol. 123r.
A detailed description of this process is to be found in Scientific Methodology, pp. 117–120.
Theodoric makes this procedure explicit when he distinguishes “elements according to quality” from “elements according to substance”; see Scientific Methodology, p. 115.
This was common teaching in the Middle Ages, although there were two variations on the teaching, one stemming from Avicenna and the other from Averroes. According to Avicenna, the elements remain in the compound actually as to their substantial forms while their qualities are present only in a remiss state; in his view, elemental qualities are capable of intension and remission and have a certain latitude according to which they can be found with a particular substantial form. According to Averroes, on the other hand, both the substantial forms of the elements and their qualities undergo a remission and remain within the compound in a remiss state, the substantial forms of the elements having a peculiar existence in the compound midway between that of substance and accident. For details, see A. Maier, An der Grenze von Scholastik und Naturwissenschaft, 2d ed., Rome 1952, p. 29. Theodoric followed Averroes, as did most of his contemporaries.
Thus Theodoric could explain heat by non-heat, quantity by non-quantity, etc., simply because the radical substrate that served as his basic principle of explanation lacked these specific attributes.
For a detailed account, see L. K. Nash, ‘The Atomic-Molecular Theory’, in Harvard Case Histories in Experimental Science (ed. J. B. Conant), Cambridge, Mass., 1957, Vol. I, pp. 215–321; also L. L. Whyte, Essay on Atomism: From Democritus to I960, Middletown, Conn., 1961.
The Reality of Elementary Particles’, in Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association 38 (1964) 154–166.
A detailed analysis of the information on which this argument is based is to be found in P. Soccorsi, De Vi Cognitionis Humanae in Scientia Physica, Rome 1958.
The distinction between physical, mathematical, and physico-mathematical statements is explained in W. A. W.llace, ‘Some Demonstrations in the Science,of Nature’, The Thomist Reader 1957, Washington 1957, pp. 90–118.
For a full analysis of the oil-drop experiment and its probative value regarding the existence of electrons, see J. D. Stranathan, The “Particles” of Modern Physics, Philadelphia 1942, pp. 46–64.
The statement is often made by physicists that, although particular theories of the atom or of elementary particles may pass out of vogue, energy levels are here to stay. The analysis of experimentally verifiable data such as measurements of energy levels forms the basis for the assignation of quantum numbers, and thus these too would seem to be ‘here to stay’.
The Eightfold Way: A Theory of Strong Interaction Symmetry’, Report CTSL-20, March 15,1961, Synchrotron Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California, reprinted as Part I, Sect. 1 of M. Gell-Mann and Y. Ne’eman, The Eightfold Way, New York and Amsterdam, 1964.
In the cited popular presentation of Chew, Gell-Mann, and Rosenfeld, 82 strongly interacting particles were identified in various energy states; according to newspaper reports, these since have been augmented by discoveries of additional states at higher energies.
A diagonal transition is permitted in Gell-Mann’s system, it would seem, because the mass number is conserved while both Q and I (or Y) are changing. In Theodoric’s system, where only two parameters are variable (H and W) and there is no constant such as mass number to be conserved, diagonal transitions are automatically disallowed.
Op. cit., pp. 46–47.
For a justification of such definitions, see W. A. Wallace, ‘The Measurement and Definition of Sensible Qualities’, The New Scholasticism 39 (1965) 1–25.
Equivalently, this grants to both an entity and its attributes an ontological status while maintaining that the entity is more fundamental than its attributes; in scholastic terminology, both substance and accident are real, but substance is more fundamental than accident and as a consequence can enter into the definition (or explanation) of accident.
Op. cit., pp. 41, 53, 59–62, 59–72, 160, 166.
Ibid., p. 70.
Ibid., pp. 40-41.
According to this terminology, the real is divided into the potential and the actual. For example, rationality in a human being is real: it is potential in the child who cannot yet actually reason, although he has the basic capability or potency to do so; it is actual in the adult who does in fact reason.
The term ‘elements’, it may be noted, is essentially relative or relational in meaning. For example, syllables may be referred to as the ‘elements’ out of which words are composed of letters as further ‘elements’. In like manner, what is regarded by the chemist as an element in his science need not be so regarded by the physicist in his; or, what is regarded by the physicist as an element in one application need not be so regarded in another application.
The sense in which an elementary particle may be regarded as a ‘construct’ is thus twofold: it may be ‘constructed’ or contrived experimentally, by laboratory conditions, or it may be ‘constructed’ or contrived logically, by the theoretician in an attempt to explain high-energy experiments. Recent philosophers of science seem to neglect the first sense entirely and to overemphasize the second sense.
What is involved here is not time duration alone, but a stable nature that seeks continued self-preservation against the ravages of extrinsic deteriorating agents.
See D. Böhm, Causality and Chance in Modern Physics New York 1957. (Reprint 1961.)
For an exposition and defense of this view, see N. R. Hanson, ‘The Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Theory’, Philosophy of Science, (ed. A. Danto and S. Morgenbesser ), New York 1960, pp. 450 - 470.
M. Born, Natural Philosophy of Cause and Chance, Oxford 1949; H. Reichenbach, Modern Philosophy of Science, New York 1959.
See S. Vonsovski and G. Kursanov, ‘Lois dynamiques et statistiques dans les phé-nomènes atomiques’, Physique: Recherches internationales à la lumière du marxisme 4 (1957) 177–178; also M. E. Omelianovski, ‘Das Problem der Realität in der modernen Physik’, in Atti del XII Congresso Internazionale di Filosofia, Florence 1960, Vol. II, p. 335. Cited by F. Selvaggi, Causalità e Indeterminismo, Rome 1964, p. 373, fn. 26–27.
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Wallace, W.A. (1967). Elementarity and Reality in Particle Physics. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Proceedings of the Boston Colloquium for the Philosophy of Science 1964/1966. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 3. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-010-3508-8_13
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