Particle observation and measurement

pp. 77-123

in: Brigitte Falkenburg, Particle metaphysics, Berlin, Springer, 2007

Abstract

In order to understand the empirical basis of current particle physics, the actual structure of the subatomic domain has to be reconstructed step by step. The task is tedious. Several structural layers of physical phenomena have been discovered and investigated during a century of experimental particle physics. Some of these layers are classical, others are not, and others have a bridging function. They must be analyzed carefully. It must be made transparent step by step what physicists themselves consider to be the empirical basis for current knowledge of particle physics. And it must be made transparent what they mean in detail when they talk about subatomic particles and fields. The continued use of these terms in quantum physics gives rise to serious semantic problems. Modern particle physics is indeed the hardest case for incommensurability in Kuhn's sense.¹ Let us now study the clever ways in which physicists overcome these problems, creating the semantics of quantum physics.