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SUMMARY:The history of the electric charge c. 1897–1906 through the lens
 es of perspectival realism - Michela Massimi (University of Edinburgh)
DTSTART:20201029T153000Z
DTEND:20201029T170000Z
UID:TALK151786@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Helen Curry
DESCRIPTION:Scientists often disagree both _that_ something is and about _
 what_ it is. This kind of scientific disagreement is of great interest to 
 historians of science\, who might want to establish _who_ really discovere
 d some entity – e.g. whether it was Joseph Priestley rather than Antoine
  Lavoisier who discovered what we now call 'oxygen'\; or\, whether it was 
 George J. Stoney or J.J. Thomson who really discovered the electron\, give
 n that in his Nobel Prize speech Thomson was still calling his entity a 'c
 orpuscle'. But\, historiographical debates aside\, disagreement that somet
 hing is and about what it is also raises pressing questions for philosophe
 rs with realist leanings. How are we to spell out the realist commitment i
 n cases where scientists disagree about the nature of the entity? What is 
 it like to be a realist in the face of scientific disagreement? This paper
  takes some steps towards answering this question by looking at the case o
 f the electric charge. As it happens\, at the turn of the last century\, t
 here was a disagreement about the nature of the electron as the bearer of 
 the electric charge. And there were also different views about the electri
 c charge and the reasons why it is a 'natural unit'. Digging (briefly for 
 limits of space here) into the history of this scientific disagreement aro
 und 1897–1906 is instructive for two different reasons. First\, it helps
  elucidate the nature of disagreement. This was rooted not in scientists a
 ccepting or denying pieces of evidence\, but rather in the way in which pi
 eces of evidence\, or\, better\, data\, were embedded in different _scient
 ific perspectives_ and used for inferring a variety of phenomena\, from wh
 ich the electric charge could in turn be inferred. Second\, a brief foray 
 into the history of the electric charge can help us understand the exact n
 ature of the realist commitment that is compatible with what I call 'persp
 ectival disagreement'.
LOCATION:Zoom
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