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Model-groups as scientific research programmes

  • Paper in Philosophy of the Natural Sciences
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Abstract

Lakatos’s methodology of scientific research programmes centres around series of theories, with little regard to the role of models in theory construction. Modifying it to incorporate model-groups, clusters of developmental models that are intended to become new theories, provides a description of the model dynamics within the search for physics beyond the standard model. At the moment, there is no evidence for BSM physics, despite a concerted search effort especially focused around the standard model account of electroweak symmetry breaking (also known as the Higgs mechanism). Using the framework provided by Lakatosian research programmes, we can capture the way the periphery of a model-group changes as the available parameter space shrinks, while its central tenets remain untouched by unfavourable experimental findings. By way of motivation, I provide two case studies of model-groups that offer alternative mechanisms for electroweak symmetry breaking: supersymmetry and composite-Higgs models. Both of these model-groups are under pressure from the discovery of the Higgs boson, yet they have both been active research projects in the years after the Higgs discovery. However, a proper assessment of the progress of an ongoing research programme is impossible through a purely Lakatosian lens, so I propose replacing it with Laudan’s problem-solving account, which provides ongoing assessment, while offering normative guidance concerning the pursuit-worthiness of research programmes. My incorporation of model-groups into Lakatosian research programmes captures the developments of two attempts to expand our physical description of the world, and Laudan’s problem-solving rationality allows us to assess their pursuit-worthiness.

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Notes

  1. As originally described by Englert and Brout (1964); Higgs (1964a, 1964b); Guralnik et al.(1964).

  2. The naturalness problem is roughly understood as the large, surprising, and unexplained difference in scale between important parameters in the SM. Fine-tuning in physics is a measure of the precision of adjustments made to various parameters of a model to accommodate experimental observations.

  3. See Friederich et al. (2014) for an overview of the worries with the SM Higgs mechanism and Wells (2018) for an argument that the Higgs boson is an “immoderate speculation.”

  4. There are other aspects of the MSRP that might cause one to be ‘Lakatos intolerant.’ One of these will be explored in more detail later, with mention of additional worries over Lakatos’s project.

  5. For more on incorporating BSM models into the Models as Mediators approach, including Hartmann’s (1999) discussion of narratives, see Stöltzner (2014).

  6. Iliopoulos (2014) has suggested, for instance, that the SM is now complete and should be referred to as “The Standard Theory.”

  7. Borrelli (2012) offers a precursor to this idea, using the concept of “theoretical core” introduced by Morrison (2007).

  8. Lakatos is not explicit about why competition is better for progress. From the context, it likely stems from the way programmes are assessed: since programmes are only assessed in hindsight, competition increases the likelihood that some programme will be increasing its “heuristic power” during any particular timespan. Lakatos also remarks that without a rival, a scientist may feel a “hypersensitivity to anomalies and a feeling of a Kuhnian ‘crisis’ ” (68). Of course, one could also see a sort of evolutionary account of competition, like that described by, for example, van Fraassen (1980).

  9. Lakatos describes how whole research programmes can be “grafted on to older programmes with which they are blatantly inconsistent” (Lakatos 1978a, 56), a process he referred to as ‘competitive symbiosis.’

  10. A technique that has become popular within the physics literature is operator product expansions (OPEs) in the framework of SM effective field theories (SMEFTs). This technique is often referred to as a model-independent search strategy, which raises the question of whether SMEFT/OPEs are a model-group (or otherwise count as a research programme), or if they belong in some other category. There are consistent methods within this approach, and models of some kind are still produced (see, e.g., Dawson 2017). I don’t include SMEFT/OPEs here, since the technique is more of a broad mathematical searching strategy, without an easily discernible hard core, suggesting that the technique is a search strategy to generate new research programmes, rather than a single programme in its own right. Determining whether it can properly be classified as a Lakatosian research programme is beyond the scope of the current discussion.

  11. Indeed: “It will be evident that this model is not intended as a realistic theory of weak or electromagnetic interactions. Rather,it is only an example of what we feel is probably a large class of theories in which the spontaneous symmetry breaking derives from general features of an apparently symmetric interaction” (Cornwall and Norton 1973, 3338).

  12. See Susskind (1979) and Dimopoulos and Susskind (1979).

  13. It should be noted that some TC models are able to account for EWSB dynamically and without a resulting scalar, and are thus considered ‘Higgsless.’

  14. See, e.g., Redi and Tesi (2012) for a discussion of possible light composite Higgs particles following the announcement.

  15. In a presentation immediately following the Higgs announcement, Pomarol (2012) displayed a picture of a tombstone labelled ‘Technicolor Models’ and declared Higgsless models were dead. However, he anticipated the Higgs-imposter strategy, with the next slide showing a zombie emerging from behind the tombstone.

  16. The search was conducted using the search terms: ‘find c Nucl Phys B365 259 and d 1991-> 2011 and (k “Higgs model: composite” or k “Higgs particle: composite”)’ and ‘find c Nucl Phys B365 259 and d 2012-> 2017 and (k “Higgs model: composite” or k “Higgs particle: composite”)’.

  17. Many CH models also predict heavy partners for SM particles, associated with a new gauge field. The primary difference between the CH partners and SUSY’s superpartners is that the latter have spins different from their SM counterparts, while the former have identical spins.

  18. The hierarchy problem, previously mentioned in Section 1, arises because the Higgs boson’s mass is so much lighter than the Planck mass, which is surprising because it was expected that the Higgs boson mass would receive quantum contributions from every particle it couples with, making its mass comparable to the scale of new physics (either the Planck or grand unification scale) without a fine-tuned correction of the order of \(\sim \!10^{30}\). Since SUSY provides a symmetry between fermions and bosons, and the quantum contributions to the scalar mass from superpartners have opposite signs, these contributions cancel and a light Higgs mass matching is expected.

  19. I’ve borrowed this formulation from Hall et al. (2012), since their work is used by many commentators contemporaneous with the Higgs discovery. This prediction arises because the Higgs mass is predominantly controlled by the mass of A (the pseudoscalar Higgs), tanβ, the stop masses, and the stop mixing parameter, Xt.

  20. See Hall et al. (2012) for more details on the following discussion.

  21. ‘Mixing’ refers to the linear combination of two or more mass eigenstates. Here, it refers to the way the stop couples to other particles, particularly the Higgs.

  22. The steps to adapt to the data are different, but this assessment is true for the non-SUSY extended and extra-dimensions model-groups as well.

  23. Hacking didn’t take this to be a defect of Lakatos’s methodology, since “[t]here are no significant general laws about what, in a current bit of research, bodes well for the future…only truisms” (134). However, such a truism may be better at capturing actual scientific practice, and for providing rational norms for scientific decision making.

  24. This is true for both empirical and conceptual problems.

  25. The arguments in this section are expanded upon in Chall (2019).

  26. Dawid (2013) argues that making unexpected, unlooked for explanatory connections should raise the credence of a theory.

  27. Anecdotally, this appears to be true, as there is a rise in “model-independent” approaches and completely new models. Indeed, one particle physics theorist I’ve spoken with stated that there is an increasing number of radical, or even ostensibly implausible models appearing as a direct response to the LHC data and its lack of SM deviations.

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Acknowledgements

This paper was written with the support of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) Research Unit “The Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider” (grant FOR 2063). I would like to thank Martin King, Peter Mättig, Michael Stöltzner, and the rest of the research unit for their helpful comments. This paper benefited from the insightful questions of the participants of the joint philosophy colloquium organized by the Chairs of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Bonn and University of Cologne, as well as attendees at several conferences (MS8, Foundations 2018, PSA 2019, and GWP 2019). I would also like to thank my anonymous reviewers for their many helpful comments. Finally, I would like to thank my lovely wife, Alicia, who has been endlessly encouraging.

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  1. Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Physikalisches Institut, Nussallee 12, Bonn, 53115, Germany

    Cristin Chall

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Chall, C. Model-groups as scientific research programmes. Euro Jnl Phil Sci 10, 6 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13194-019-0271-7

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