In this paper, we discuss the role of Mathematics in articulating reality in theoretical Physics. We propose a parallel between empirical and theoretical work and investigate how scientists can also speak about reality without performing any laboratory trial, a key explanation element of STS. To do so, we examine Einsteins 1905 paper on the nature of light for which he received the Nobel Prize of Physics in 1922 and which is deemed as revolutionary by contemporary textbooks. Using Bakhtins Philosophy of Language, we analyze Einsteins narrative to trace the mechanisms he has used to articulate a new entity, the quantum without performing any experiment or empirical observation. We dialogue with classical results obtained by STS in the context of empirical sciences, drawing in particular on Bruno Latours concept of chain of reference. We have also used Bakhtins metalinguistic analysis to highlight Einsteins rhetoric strategies. Our results indicate that the concept of chain of reference can be applied to theoretical physics and that it is possible to trace a parallel between laboratory trials and mathematical trials, in which mathematic operators play the role of laboratory equipment. We show that the main features of the laboratory trials are also present in the mathematical ones. Moreover, our analysis challenges the common representation of Einsteins paper as a moment of epistemological rupture and highlights, on the contrary, its translation efforts to articulate new ideas with the dominant paradigm of the time.
In the late seventies, the focus of Science and Technology Studies (STS) shifted (or rather was extended) from the investigation of scientific knowledge (Bloor 1982and 1991, Douglas 1970, Cardwel 1971, Shapin and Schaffer 1985) to the observation of scientific practice through ethnographic techniques (Knorr-Cetina 1981, 1995, 1999, Latour and Woolgar 1988, Galisson 1997, Collins and Evans 2002). By focusing on the "anthropology of the laboratory", this "second wave of STS" (Mody, 2015) privileged the description of experimental sciences in detriment of more formal or theoretical disciplines (which rely more on mathematics than on laboratory trials)1 .
To be sure, this does not mean that these disciplines have been completely neglected by STS. There are several studies which discuss the sociological aspects of mathematical proofs (Bloor 1991, 1973, 1978, Livingston 1986, MacKenzie 1999); propose ethnographies of theoretical physics (Gale and Pinnick 1997, Cetina and Merz 1997, Merz and Cetina 1997, Pickering 1999); describe the way in which tools are used (Kaiser, Ito, and Hall 2004) and investigate the relation between physics and its culture (Reyes-Galindo 2014). Few of them, however, tried to extend to theoretical sciences the ontological debate that STS opened on empirical sciences and to explore how scientific facts can be constructed other than by the experimental devices of the laboratory. In this paper, we are specifically interested in reflecting on the following question: how is it possible for a theoretical scientist to talk about the world without performing any experiment? In other words, how can mathematics be used instead of laboratories to articulate reality?
We intend to make a small contribution to STS by suggesting a preliminary answer to this question. We will do so by carrying out a metalinguistic analysis (Bakhtin 2016(Bakhtin , 2017) ) of the paper in which Albert Einstein (1905a) proposed that light is composed by “quanta” and for which he received the Nobel Prize of Physics. In our analysis, we discuss the role of mathematics in the articulation of a new actant (the quantum) departing from the concept of “chain of reference”, proposed by Bruno Latour (1999) 2 .
The choice for Einstein’s paper as an object of study is due to its importance in the field of quantum physics according to textbooks (Eisberg and Resnick 1985, Cohen-Tannoudji, Diu, and Laloë 1991, Messiah 1961) and historiographic books (Greenstein andZajonc 1997, Martins andRosa 2014). Quantum physics is one of the most popular branches of modern physics, offering what physicists claim to be the most complete theory available to explain matter structure. Through the 20th century, its development originated new areas of physics such as quantum field theory (Landau andLifchitz 1966, Sakurai 2013), quantum optics (Glauber 1963 a, b) quantum information theory (Benatti 2009), quantum thermodynamics (Vinjanampathy and Anders 2016), quantum gravitation (Woodard 2009), as well as many technological applications in areas like nuclear engineering, semiconductors physics, medicine (Young 1984) and nanoscience (Hornyak, Dutta, and Tibbals 2008). By analyzing Einstein’s work, we intend to interpret one of the basilar papers of modern physics.
In section 2, we introduce Latour’s concept of “circulating reference” and present key elements of Bakhtin’s metalinguistics which we use to interpret Einstein’s paper in section 3. In section 3, we dissect Einstein’s proposition on the light quanta and we discuss how mathematics can be used to articulate reality. In section 4, we use Bakhtin’s philosophy of language to analyze the rhetoric strategies used by Einstein to convince his peers of the quantum existences. In section 5, we’ discuss the role of Einstein’s paper in Quantum Physics History and its relation to contemporary scientific textbooks.
In order to dialogue with STS debate on ontology, we take as our point of departure the notion of “chain of reference”, proposed by Latour after following a soil science expedition in Brazil (Latour 1999). Through its ethnography, Latour concluded that scientific knowledge is not acquired by direct observation, but by subjecting natural phenomena to a series of transformations, which make observation increasingly indirect. It’s only through this movement that scientific knowledge becomes possible. Thus, in order to “know the forest”, it is necessary to take some distance from it, in a scientific version of Saramago’s quote: “you have to leave the island in order to see the island.”
Never, not even at the beginning of their research, scientists did perform an unmediated observation of their object. From the onset, several maps mediated their appraisal of the Brazilian forest. Their subsequent steps were to collect and arrange samples of the forest (rocks, land and plants) using different tools. At each stage, scientists referred simultaneously to the samples, the code, the instruments, the carto
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