31 found
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  1. Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections.Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani (eds.) - 2002 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    Highlighting main issues and controversies, this book brings together current philosophical discussions of symmetry in physics to provide an introduction to the subject for physicists and philosophers. The contributors cover all the fundamental symmetries of modern physics, such as CPT and permutation symmetry, as well as discussing symmetry-breaking and general interpretational issues. Classic texts are followed by new review articles and shorter commentaries for each topic. Suitable for courses on the foundations of physics, philosophy of physics and philosophy of science, (...)
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  2.  94
    Symmetry and Symmetry Breaking.Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani - forthcoming - The Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Symmetry considerations dominate modern fundamental physics, both in quantum theory and in relativity. Philosophers are now beginning to devote increasing attention to such issues as the significance of gauge symmetry, quantum particle identity in the light of permutation symmetry, how to make sense of parity violation, the role of symmetry breaking, the empirical status of symmetry principles, and so forth. These issues relate directly to traditional problems in the philosophy of science, including the status of the laws of nature, the (...)
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  3.  77
    Interpreting Bodies: Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics.Elena Castellani (ed.) - 1998 - Princeton University Press.
    Bewildering features of modern physics, such as relativistic space-time structure and the peculiarities of so-called quantum statistics, challenge traditional ways of conceiving of objects in space and time. Interpreting Bodies brings together essays by leading philosophers and scientists to provide a unique overview of the implications of such physical theories for questions about the nature of objects. The collection combines classic articles by Max Born, Werner Heisenberg, Hans Reichenbach, and Erwin Schrodinger with recent contributions, including several papers that have never (...)
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  4. (1 other version)Reductionism, emergence, and effective field theories.Elena Castellani - 2000 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 33 (2):251-267.
    In recent years, a ''change in attitude'' in particle physics has led to our understanding current quantum field theories as effective field theories (EFTs). The present paper is concerned with the significance of this EFT approach, especially from the viewpoint of the debate on reductionism in science. In particular, I shall show how EFTs provide a new and interesting case study in current philosophical discussion on reduction, emergence, and inter-level relationships in general.
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  5. Symmetries and invariances in classical physics.Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani - unknown - In Jeremy Butterfield & John Earman (eds.). Elsevier.
    Symmetry, intended as invariance with respect to a transformation (more precisely, with respect to a transformation group), has acquired more and more importance in modern physics. This Chapter explores in 8 Sections the meaning, application and interpretation of symmetry in classical physics. This is done both in general, and with attention to specific topics. The general topics include illustration of the distinctions between symmetries of objects and of laws, and between symmetry principles and symmetry arguments (such as Curie's principle), and (...)
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  6.  79
    Galilean Particles: An Example of Constitution of Objects.Elena Castellani - unknown
    A draft version of Chapter 11 of the edited volume 'Interpreting Bodies. Classical and Quantum Objects in Modern Physics',. The Chapter is devoted to illustrating the group-theoretic approach to the issue of physical objects. In particular, the Chapter discusses the group-theoretic constitution of classical and quantum particles in the nonrelativistic case.
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  7.  52
    Introduction to special issue on dualities.Elena Castellani & Dean Rickles - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 59:1-5.
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  8.  25
    Classic texts: Extracts from Leibniz, Kant, and Black.Katherine A. Brading & Elena Castellani - 2002 - In Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 203.
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  9. Duality and ‘particle’ democracy.Elena Castellani - 2017 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B: Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 59:100-108.
    Weak/strong duality is usually accompanied by what seems a puzzling ontological feature: the fact that under this kind of duality what is viewed as 'elementary' in one description gets mapped to what is viewed as 'composite' in the dual description. This paper investigates the meaning of this apparent 'particle democracy', as it has been called, by adopting an historical approach. The aim is to clarify the nature of the correspondence between 'dual particles' in the light of an historical analysis of (...)
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  10. Which Curie’s Principle?Elena Castellani & Jenann Ismael - 2016 - Philosophy of Science 83 (5):1002-1013.
    Is there more that one "Curie's principle"? How far are different formulations legitimate? What are the aspects that make it so scientifically fruitful, independently of how it is formulated? The paper is devoted to exploring these questions. We start with illustrating Curie's original 1894 article and his focus. Then, we consider the way that the discussion of the principle took shape from early commentators to its modern form. We say why we think that the modern focus on the inter-state version (...)
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  11.  55
    Dualities and intertheoretic relations.Elena Castellani - 2009 - In Mauricio Suárez, Mauro Dorato & Miklós Rédei (eds.), EPSA Philosophical Issues in the Sciences: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer. pp. 9--19.
    This is the first of two papers concerned with the philosophical significance of dualities as applied in recent fundamental physics. The general idea is that, for its peculiarity, this ‘new’ ingredient in theory construction can open unexpected perspectives in the current philosophical reflection on contemporary physics. In particular, today’s physical dualities represent an unusual type of intertheory relation, the meaning of which deserves to be investigated. The aim is to show how discussing this point brings into play, at the same (...)
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  12. On the meaning of symmetry breaking.Elena Castellani - unknown
    This is the review paper for the section III ("Symmetry breaking") of the volume "Symmetries in physics: philosophical reflections", Cambridge University Press, 2003, edited by Katherine A. Brading and Elena Castellani. The paper's sections are: 1. Preliminaries (I); 2. Symmetry breaking and Curie's analysis; 3. Preliminaries (II); 4. Symmetry breaking of physical laws (4.1. Explicit symmetry breaking; 4.2. Spontaneous symmetry breaking); 5. Symmetry breaking and philosophical questions.
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  13.  53
    Scientific Methodology: A View from Early String Theory.Elena Castellani - unknown
    This paper addresses the question as to whether the methodology followed in building/assessing string theory can be considered scientific in the same sense, say, that the methodology followed in building/assessing the Standard Model of particle physics is scientific, by focussing on the "founding" period of the theory. More precisely, its aim is to argue for a positive answer to the above question – there is no real change of scientific status in the way of proceeding and reasoning in fundamental physical (...)
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  14.  44
    Renormalization group methods: Which kind of explanation?Elena Castellani & Emilia Margoni - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 95 (C):158-166.
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  15.  43
    The Practice of Naturalness: A Historical-Philosophical Perspective.Arianna Borrelli & Elena Castellani - 2019 - Foundations of Physics 49 (9):860-878.
    No evidence of “new physics” was found so far by LHC experiments, and this situation has led some voices in the physics community to call for the abandonment of the “naturalness” criterion, while other scientists have felt the need to break a lance in its defense by claiming that, at least in some sense, it has already led to successes and therefore should not be dismissed too quickly, but rather only reflected or reshaped to fit new needs. In our paper (...)
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  16. Symmetry, quantum mechanics, and beyond.Elena Castellani - 2002 - Foundations of Science 7 (1-2):181-196.
    The relevance of symmetry to today's physics is a widely acknowledged fact. A significant part of recent physical inquiry – especially the physics concerned with investigating the fundamentalbuilding blocks of nature – is grounded on symmetry principles andtheir many and far-reaching consequences. But where these symmetries come from and what their real meaning is are open questions, at the center of a developing debate among physicists and philosophers of science. To tackle the problems arising in considering the symmetry issue is (...)
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  17. The physics and metaphysics of identity and individuality: Steven French and Décio Krause: Identity in physics: A historical, philosophical, and formal analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006, 440 pp, £68.00 HB.Don Howard, Bas C. van Fraassen, Otávio Bueno, Elena Castellani, Laura Crosilla, Steven French & Décio Krause - 2010 - Metascience 20 (2):225-251.
    The physics and metaphysics of identity and individuality Content Type Journal Article DOI 10.1007/s11016-010-9463-7 Authors Don Howard, Department of Philosophy and Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA Bas C. van Fraassen, Philosophy Department, San Francisco State University, 1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132, USA Otávio Bueno, Department of Philosophy, University of Miami, Coral Gables, FL 33124, USA Elena Castellani, Department of Philosophy, University of Florence, Via Bolognese 52, 50139 (...)
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  18.  63
    Duality, Fundamentality, and Emergence.Elena Castellani & Sebastian De Haro - unknown
    We argue that dualities offer new possibilities for relating fundamentality, levels, and emergence. Namely, dualities often relate two theories whose hierarchies of levels are inverted relative to each other, and so allow for new fundamentality relations, as well as for epistemic emergence. We find that the direction of emergence typically found in these cases is opposite to the direction of emergence followed in the standard accounts. Namely, the standard emergence direction is that of decreasing fundamentality: there is emergence of less (...)
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  19.  41
    Symmetry and equivalence.Elena Castellani - 2002 - In Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani (eds.), Symmetries in Physics: Philosophical Reflections. New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 425--436.
  20. Leibniz's Principle, Physics, and the Language of Physics.Elena Castellani & Peter Mittelstaedt - 2000 - Foundations of Physics 30 (10):1587-1604.
    This paper is concerned with the problem of the validity of Leibniz's principle of the identity of indiscernibles in physics. After briefly surveying how the question is currently discussed in recent literature and which is the actual meaning of the principle for what concerns physics, we address the question of the physical validity of Leibniz's principle in terms of the existence of a sufficient number of naming predicates in the formal language of physics. This approach allows us to obtain in (...)
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  21.  67
    The birth of string theory: Introduction and synopsis.Andrea Cappelli, Elena Castellani, Filippo Colomo & Paolo Di Vecchia - unknown
    This is a draft of the introduction to the collective volume "The birth of string theory", including the book's index and preface. The book explores the history of the theory’s early stages of development, as told by its main protagonists. It journeys from the first version of the theory in the late 1960s, as an attempt to describe the physics of strong interactions outside the framework of quantum field theory, to its reinterpretation around the mid-1970s as a quantum theory of (...)
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  22.  22
    Convergence strategies for theory assessment.Elena Castellani - 2024 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 104 (C):78-87.
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  23.  79
    Nested modalities in astrophysical modeling.Elena Castellani & Giulia Schettino - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-20.
    In the context of astrophysical modeling at the solar system scale, we investigate the modalities implied by taking into account different levels of detail at which phenomena can be considered. In particular, by framing the analysis in terms of the how-possibly/how-actually distinction, we address the debated question as to whether the degree of plausibility is tightly linked to the degree of detail. On the grounds of concrete examples, we argue that, also in the astrophysical context examined, this is not necessarily (...)
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  24.  37
    Early string theory as a challenging case study for philosophers.Elena Castellani - unknown
    This is the final draft of Chapter 4 of the Volume 'The Birth of String Theory' edited by A. Cappelli, E. Castellani, F. Colomo, and P. Di Vecchia, Cambridge University Press, forthcoming.
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  25.  31
    Dirac on gauges and constraints.Elena Castellani - unknown
    This paper is devoted to examining the relevance of Dirac's view on the use of transformation theory and invariants in modern physics --- as it emerges from his 1930 book on quantum mechanics as well as from his later work on singular theories and constraints --- to current reflections on the meaning of physical symmetries, especially gauge symmetries.
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  26.  36
    About the oxford symmetry workshop and the papers posted under that heading.Katherine A. Brading & Elena Castellani - unknown
    The papers posted under the heading 'Symmetries in Physics, New Reflections: Oxford Workshop, January 2001' were presented and discussed at the corresponding workshop. As the organisers, we give a brief summary of the purpose of the workshop, and list the talks and the participants.
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  27.  25
    First page preview.Katherine Brading & Elena Castellani - 2005 - International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 19 (1).
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  28.  11
    La filosofia della scienza.Elena Castellani - 2019 - Bologna: Il mulino. Edited by Matteo Morganti.
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  29.  15
    Rapporti interteor1ci E teorie di Campo effettive.Elena Castellani - 2001 - In V. Fano, M. Stanzione & G. Tarozzi (eds.), Prospettive Della Logica E Della Filosofia Della Scienza. Rubettino. pp. 153.
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  30.  55
    Symmetry Breaking.Elena Castellani & Radin Dardashti - 2022 - In Eleanor Knox & Alastair Wilson (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Philosophy of Physics. London, UK: Routledge.
    A brief introduction to the physics and philosophy of symmetry breaking.
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  31.  30
    Appearance in this list neither guarantees nor precludes a future review of the book. Adamson, Jane, Freadman, Richard and Parker, David (eds.), Renegotiating Ethics in Literature, Philosophy, and Theory, Cambridge, UK, Cambridge University Press, 1999, pp. 294,£ 35.00,£ 12.95. Annas, Julia, Platonic Ethics Old and New, Ithaca, New York, USA, Cornell Univer. [REVIEW]Roger Ariew, John Cottingham, Tom Sorrell, Richard J. Blackwell, Robert de Lucca, David Boucher, Bruce Haddock, Warren Breckman, Elena Castellani & Jules L. Coleman - 1999 - Mind 108:430.