•  681
    Bottoms up: The Standard Model Effective Field Theory from a model perspective
    with Philip Bechtle, Cristin Chall, Martin King, Peter Mättig, and Michael Stöltzner
    Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 92 129-143. 2022.
    Experiments in particle physics have hitherto failed to produce any significant evidence for the many explicit models of physics beyond the Standard Model (BSM) that had been proposed over the past decades. As a result, physicists have increasingly turned to model-independent strategies as tools in searching for a wide range of possible BSM effects. In this paper, we describe the Standard Model Effective Field Theory (SM-EFT) and analyse it in the context of the philosophical discussions abou…Read more
  •  72
    The present paper investigates the philosophical relationship between John von Neumann’s Nohidden-variable theorem and Bell’s inequalities. Bell erroneously takes the axiomatic method as implying a finality claim and thus ignores von Neumann’s strongly pragmatist stance towards mathematical physics. If one considers, however, Hilbert’s axiomatic method as a critical enterprise, Bell’s theorem improves von Neumann’s by defining a more appropriate notion of ‘ hidden variable’ that permits one to i…Read more
  •  54
    Only recently has David Hilbert’s program to axiomatize the sciences according to the pattern of geometry left the shade of his formalist program in the foundations of mathematics.1 This relative neglect — which is surprising in view of the enormous efforts Hilbert himself had devoted to it — was certainly influenced by Logical Empiricists’ almost exclusively focusing on his contributions to the foundational debates. Ulrich Majer puts part of the blame for this neglect on Hilbert himself because…Read more
  •  12
    In a famous paper of 1913, Otto Neurath argues that both in science and society there occur situations in which two or more alternatives are equally rational. On pain of pseudorationalism (or even spiritism) and an uneconomical loss of resources, the rationalist has to admit that the only rational strategy is to resolve the matter by an auxiliary motive, that is, ultimately by tossing a coin. The present contribution first discusses the auxiliary motive as a contribution to the philosophical the…Read more