Abstract
Condensed Matter Physics is a branch of research which alone constitutes the biggest slice of the physics community at large (Particle physics, in second place, is still only half in size). The hot and big problem in Condensed Matter Physics today is the puzzle of High Temperature Superconductivity (HTS), object of an ongoing and philosophically rich controversy. I argue that the role of the scientific community and the role of dissenting positions is epistemically crucial for determining the nature and impact of experimental practice in HTS research. In order to delve into ongoing scientific controversies I take it to be necessary to take a multidisciplinary approach. This controversy is then (1) interpreted and analysed inside the philosophical debate on explanation, prediction and scientific agreement (2) located in its historical context, and considered in its complex historical evolution (3) explored ex-cathedra through experience in laboratories and interviews with living working scientists (4) assessed with a sociological eye, to acknowledge the discrepancies between the vision of the community as it emerges from peer-reviewed publications and official media and the vision of the community depicted by the dissenting minorities.
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Notes
- 1.
Chandra Varma interviewed first in Dresden on July 12, 2006 and a second time at UC Irvine on April 19, 2008.
- 2.
Robert Cava interviewed in Dresden on July 13, 2006.
- 3.
Among the types of systematic experimentation that are not guided by theory, Friederich Steinle (1997, 2006) introduces one called ‘exploratory’. In his view, it typically occurs in those periods in which scientists are entering new research fields. In my view, and maybe compatibly with Steinle’s, exploratory experimentation practices are found even in later, more advanced, stages of theory, particularly when, as in the case of superconductivity, the phenomena are very complex.
- 4.
Cartwright for example argues that in the strongest sense this is actually always the case (1999).
- 5.
This point is also re-stated in Anderson’s “central dogmas”, which I discuss elsewhere.
- 6.
A term coined in 1878.
- 7.
Emilio Segrè, who was a particle physicist and a student of Fermi, pointed out that Onnes’ lab represented the forerunner of the institutions of Big Science. He noticed that usually scientists or scholars associate the passage of physics to the large scales with the introduction of particle accelerators. While the seeds of big science are certainly visible there, several features that characterize the large scale model had already emerged in Leiden. “The association of science with engineering, the collective character of the work, the international status of the laboratory, the specialization of laboratories centred on one technique, the division of the personnel into permanent staff and visitors. A laboratory with all these characteristics had been formed by Heike Kamerlingh Onnes at the end of the nineteenth century for the study of low-temperature phenomena” (p. 18).
- 8.
He supports this with the example of the discovery of X-rays, interpreted in his own way: the physicist Lenard “had an experimental set-up which was better for certain quantitative measurement than Rontgen’s, so he did not discover X-rays” (p. 161).
- 9.
If V = RI, and R = 0 then V = 0.
- 10.
(1) (First London equation, for E)
Applying Faraday’s law to (1), one obtains a differential equation for B. This equation permits both constant and exponentially decaying solutions but London recognized that constant non-zero solutions were non-physical, because they would disagree with the Meissner effect. The resulting simplification led to the second London equation, which was postulated to complement Maxwell’s:
(2) (Second London equation, for B)
The equation for B states that the curl of the current, js, is proportional to the magnetic field, B. The terms e and m are the charge and mass of the electron, but ns was a new phenomenological constant loosely associated with the number density of superconducting carriers.
The proportionality factor turned out to have the dimensions of a length, and has since been called ‘the London penetration depth’, designated lL.
This suggested a more sophisticated point. The Meissner effect did not mean that the permeability of superconductors was zero; it is just that the magnetic field cannot penetrate the surface layer beyond the London penetration depth. This startling prediction has been confirmed by many experiments, but the first ones only appeared in 1940.
- 11.
Most physicists seem to think that it is not until after the Second World War that the idea of macroscopic quantum order appeared in the scientific literature. At a time when quantum mechanics was applied only to microscopic phenomena, London’s ambition of applying it to molecules to explain macroscopic effects was a true novelty, and one that sounded almost too exotic for the average theorist (p. 71–72).
- 12.
Einstein, unfortunately, started his position at the Institute for Advanced Studies, which is adjacent but not part of Princeton. Furthermore he did not intend to take any graduate students. Bardeen’s supervision, however, did not end up in poor hands. Eugene Wigner mentored him, and led him to the publication of an important calculation from first principles of electron–phonon scattering in a metal, a calculation which turned out to be very useful to his theory of superconductivity (p. 146).
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Acknowledgements
I am indebted above all to Nancy Cartwright and Hasok Chang for comments and invaluable mentorship. Special thanks to Tom Ryckman and Micheal Friedman, to Conrad Heilmann, Alice Obrecht, and Sally Riordan for the comments and encouragement received. Thanks also go to Abrol Fairweather, the wonderful SFSU philosophy department and the lands of Big Sur. And finally, I express deep gratitude to my parents, Duccio and Fernanda.
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Di Bucchianico, M. (2014). A Matter of Phronesis: Experiment and Virtue in Physics, A Case Study. In: Fairweather, A. (eds) Virtue Epistemology Naturalized. Synthese Library, vol 366. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04672-3_17
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