Phonons—particle-like quanta that emerge from collective vibrations of the atoms that make up materials—have been touted as promoting a structuralist ontology. Structural realists claim to avoid the difficulties of bridging the ontological gap between phonons and the underlying atoms by committing only to the mathematical structure shared by their theories. I scrutinise this claim by analysing the shared structure and considering what motivates realism about it. I identify a tension between the …
Read morePhonons—particle-like quanta that emerge from collective vibrations of the atoms that make up materials—have been touted as promoting a structuralist ontology. Structural realists claim to avoid the difficulties of bridging the ontological gap between phonons and the underlying atoms by committing only to the mathematical structure shared by their theories. I scrutinise this claim by analysing the shared structure and considering what motivates realism about it. I identify a tension between the demands of structural continuity and experimental testing, and consider the viability of supplementing the structuralist ontology with some form of operational structure.
