Nurida talked about,”The Reality in Physics-Learning from the Philosophical Debate on Scientific Realism” where she focussed on the status of the philosophical debate on scientific realism specifically to the discipline of particle physics. She talked about scientific realism which says that the best theories not only work but reveal truths about entities such as electrons and black holes and exist independently of our observations. Through examples from particle physics, particularly focusing on experimental practices like, she addressed these challenges and elaborated on which aspects of realism are defensible. In particular, she took an example of quarks in quantum chromodynamics and compared it to the hobgob story where there is evidence of the presence but no direct observation. She also introduced a generalized definition of 'signatures' as real and robust traces not confined to specific experimental setups and capable of withstanding theoretical revolutions which captured the attention of many people. She ended by discussing why realism is crucial for physics.
Sophia talked about,”Murray Gell-Mann and a Different Perspective on Unification in Science” where she used Gell-Mann’s life and work to paint a different perspective and approach to science. She started by introducing the two perspectives of reductionists and anti- reductionists and the controversies between them about the unification. The concept of unification plays a major role in scientific theory debates on guiding principles in the natural sciences. She explained how reductionists understand the term unification as the reduction of all natural phenomena to as few elementary laws of nature as possible and treat this as an important ideal and, in extreme cases, as the ultimate goal of the natural sciences. While on the other hand, anti- reductionists, feel that unification in this narrow sense is not particularly relevant to most issues. Using Gell-Mann’s example, she expanded the analysis to the range of meanings of the term ‘unification’ in the direction of a holistic account which provided an insight into a scientific culture that seems to be underrepresented both in the scientific theory literature and in science education.
All in all, we were very happy to have them both for the event and answering all the questions enthusiastically. It was exciting to relate philosophy and physics and we were delighted that many students came to the event as well as took part in the discussion.