Some Possible Topics
(For end-of-semester classes and/or papers)

Curtis Brown

1. Realism vs. anti-realism. There are at least two distinguishable issues here. (1) Realistic vs. instrumentalistic interpretations of quantum theory. One dispute over quantum mechanics is really a special case of a general dispute over whether theoretical entities in science should be regarded realistically or not. The special interest of quantum mechanics in this regard is that its picture of the subatomic world is so weird and difficult to interpret that it is especially tempting to regard it as just a collection of helpful mathematical tools, without taking seriously the idea that all aspects of those tools correspond to real phenomena. (2) Realism vs. anti-realism about the nature of the world. Supposing we construe quantum theory realistically, as making genuine claims about the world, there is a further issue about what sort of view of the world it forces us to have. (This is where debates about the "interpretation" of QM enter the picture; one could regard instrumentalism as making the claim that it doesn't need an interpretation at all.) Two related questions are especially relevant, namely (a) is "determinism" compatible with QM? (Writers on QM typically mean by "determinism" the view that certain quantities have determinate values, not the view that later states are determined by earlier ones.) (b) Are there properties of the world which are observer-dependent? Some writers suggest that certain states take on definite values only when observed, so that observation doesn't just record what is already there but in some sense determines the make-up of the world. This can be made to sound a lot like the idealism of Berkeley or perhaps Hegel. Among the potentially helpful readings on this topic are these:

Bas C. van Fraassen, The Scientific Image, esp. Chapters 1 and 2. Defends an anti-realist view. This book doesn't have much to say about quantum physics, but an article by van Fraassen, "The Charybdis of Realism: Epistemological Implications of Bell's Inequality," Synthese 52 (1982): 25-38, argues that Bell's theorem refutes a version of realism.

Arthur Fine, The Shaky Game: Einstein, Realism, and the Quantum Theory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986). Chapter 6 explains the sense in which Einstein was a realist. Chapters 7 and 8 defend an alternative to both realism and anti-realism, and Chapter 9 takes up the general issue of whether scientific realism is compatible with quantum physics. (Fine says "yes.")

Nancy Cartwright, How the Laws of Physics Lie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983). Chapters 4 and 5 defend realism about theoretical entities; 5 includes a discussion of Duhem and van Fraassen. (Chapter 9, "How the Measurement Problem is an Artefact of the Mathematics," may also be of interest.)

Marshall Spector, "Mind, Matter, and Quantum Mechanics," in Patrick Grim's rather wildly misnamed collection, Philosophy of Science and the Occult, is an interesting deflationary discussion of the role of the observer in QM.

Of course there are many popular accounts of relevant material. I suppose everyone has their personal favorites; by far the clearest and most impressive presentation I've read in recent years is Brian Greene, The Fabric of the Cosmos (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2004). I'm also partial to the books of Paul Davies (e.g. Other Worlds; God and the New Physics).

2. Quantum logic. A number of writers have proposed that quantum mechanics requires us (or at least invites us) to revise the classical laws of logic. This topic should only be tackled by someone with a fairly firm grasp of classical logic. Possible readings include:

Arthur Fine, "Some Conceptual Problems of Quantum Theory," in Colodny, ed., Paradigms and Paradoxes (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1972). A good first place to look.

Hilary Putnam, "The Logic of Quantum Mechanics," in Mathematics, Matter, and Method: Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Second Edition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979). A fairly introductory presentation, with discussion of philosophical issues about whether revising classical logic in the light of empirical facts makes any sense. Putnam returns to the issue of quantum logic in "Quantum Mechanics and the Observer," in Realism and Reason: Philosophical Papers Volume 3 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983).

R.I.G. Hughes, The Structure and Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1989), especially Chapter 7. Too hard for me, but might be useful for someone with a good mathematical background.

Bas C. van Fraassen, Quantum Mechanics: An Empiricist View (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). Parts of this are also almost certainly too hard for me, but other parts look accessible; thought I'd mention it since it is by an author we are becoming somewhat familiar with.

3. Bell's Theorem. This fits in with the more general issues about whether a realistic conception of the world is adequate; Bell's theorem (in conjunction with experimental results) appears to show conclusively that hidden-variables interpretations of QM cannot work. Since arguably hidden variables were the last hope for realism, Bell's Theorem appears to have anti-realistic implications. I'd really like to spend at least a day on this -- I have a song-and-dance I can present on the topic.

David Mermin, "Is the Moon There When Nobody Looks? Reality and the Quantum Theory," Physics Today 38 (April, 1985): 38-47; letters and a response from Mermin in 38 (November, 1985), 9ff. A humorous and enjoyable piece, with historical as well as substantive discussion.

Bernard d'Espagnat, "The Quantum Theory and Reality," Scientific American CCXL (November, 1979): 158-181. My favorite introduction; careful and philosophically sensitive. (The library has several books by d’Espagnat on QM; I haven’t read them, but judging by this article I’d expect them to be good.)

Abner Shimony, "The Reality of the Quantum World," Scientific American 258 (January, 1988): 46-53. More about the experiments which seem to show that Bell's Inequality is violated.

Van Fraassen, "The Charybdis of Realism," listed above, is a useful philosophical discussion. So is Arthur Fine, "Antinomies of Entanglement: The Puzzling Case of the Tangled Statistics," Journal of Philosophy 79 (1982): 733-747, and the relevant chapter of Fine's book cited above.

"Interview: John Bell," Omni 10 (May, 1988): 84-92, 121. Fun.

4. Problems of Confirmation. There has apparently been an interesting flap in the last few years over the status of string theory. There's an apparent problem: string theory by itself doesn't seem to make any testable predictions. Steven Weinberg and others have (I gather) suggested that we should accept the theory for aesthetic reasons, reasons of overall theoretical coherence, etc., even if there isn't any way to test it directly. There's a recent, controversial book by Lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics, arguing on the contrary that string theory may well turn out to be a failed experiment. Apparently the book is as much about the culture of top-level physics departments as it is about the more theoretical stuff. I haven't read it but it sounds interesting. A quick web search shows that there are a lot of interviews with him available online, including a debate with Brian Greene. (I found out about the book from an NPR interview, which still constitutes about all I know about it. So I'm just recommending it as something that sounds interesting and relevant, not as something I know anything about at first hand.)
 

1. Creation vs. Evolution. We've discussed this to some extent already, but could do a more serious job.

A truly excellent book on evolutionary theory, with lots of interest for philosophers, is Richard Dawkins, The Blind Watchmaker (1986; reissued with a new introduction, 1996). (There's a good section on how the eye may have developed in stages in Chapter 4.)

 An excellent explanation and defense of evolutionary theory, with particular reference to creationism, is Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution (New York: Pantheon, 1983). Probably there are more up-to-date books in the same vein, but I haven't kept up on this literature.

2. "Intelligent Design." The current incarnation of the creation/evolution debate, with perhaps a few new twists and angles. We could look at Darwin's Black Box, which may be the most influential defense of intelligent design, and some of the literature critical of its theses. The string theory flap mentioned above turns out to be relevant: one of the main arguments for intelligent design has been that otherwise it's hard to explain why some of the fundamental physical constants, notably the "cosmological constant," seem to be "fine-tuned for life." String theory apparently can be construed to offer an alternative, entirely natural explanation (see e.g. http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825305.800.html).

3. Evolution and the nature of theories and confirmation. There's a very well-regarded book by Elizabeth Lloyd, The Structure and Confirmation of Evolutionary Theory, which applies the semantic view of theories to evolutionary theory and draws some consequences for confirmation theory as well. I haven't read this book yet, but would like an excuse to.

All of the following topics concern areas where scientific research and ideological issues get tangled up. Each involves both scientific claims that certain scientific results have politically sensitive consequences, and critics who claim that the work isn't really scientific at all but is ideologically driven. In the case of sociobiology and evolutionary psychology, we even have debates about whether the purported science is scientific at all, or is really a form of pseudoscience.

1. Intelligence.

selection from The Bell Curve
Ned Block, critical essay on The Bell Curve
selection from other criticisms and defenses (e.g. essays in The New Republic and in National Review, or from the volume The Bell Curve Debate)

2. Sociobiology.

selection from Wilson, On Human Nature
selection from Kitcher, Abusing Science

3. Evolutionary Pscychology.

selection from Steven Pinker, How the Mind Works
selection from Jerry Fodor, The Mind Doesn't Work That Way
Steven Jay Gould, two-part essay in New York Review of Books
responses to Gould from Dennett, Pinker
maybe something from Cosmides and Tooby, eds., The Adapted Mind
maybe critical essay by Richard Lewontin in Invitation to Cognitive Science, vol. 4

4. Research on sex differences. This is suddenly a hot topic, since a few weeks ago Lawrence Summers, the president of Harvard University, made some off-the-cuff remarks at a conference in which he suggested that it was worth considering whether the relatively small numbers of women in science and engineering had to do with innate sex differences.

selection from Longino, Science as Social Knowledge
maybe some stuff about the Summers flap