Sebastian De Haro - Böcker

The Philosophy and Physics of Duality discusses what dualities are and the philosophical questions they raise. This book also examines the main examples of duality—from quantum mechanics and electrodynamics to statistical mechanics, quantum field theory, and string theory.Part I conceptualizes dualities and discusses their main roles and themes, including how they are related to familiar notions like symmetry and interpretation. It then goes through the main simple examples of dualities: position-momentum, wave-particle, electric-magnetic, and Kramers-Wannier dualities. Part II discusses advanced examples and their inter-relations: particle-soliton dualities, electric-magnetic dualities in quantum field theories, dualities in string theory, and gauge-gravity dualities. Part III offers an in-depth exploration of the general philosophical issues onto which dualities bear: theoretical equivalence, scientific realism and the under-determination of theories by data, theory succession and the M-theory programme, explanation, and scientific understanding.Finally, the authors propose a view of scientific theories in this book—they call their account the geometric view of theories.This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read on the Oxford Academic platform and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

For more than half a century, dualities have been at the heart of modern physics. From quantum mechanics to statistical mechanics, condensed matter physics, quantum field theory and quantum gravity, dualities have proven useful in solving problems that are otherwise quite intractable. Being surprising and unexpected, dualities have been taken to raise philosophical questions about the nature and formulation of scientific theories, scientific realism, emergence, symmetries, explanation, understanding, and theory construction. This Element discusses what dualities are, gives a selection of examples, explores the themes and roles that make dualities interesting, and highlights their most salient types. It aims to be an entry point into discussions of dualities in both physics and philosophy. The philosophical discussion emphasises three main topics: whether duals are theoretically equivalent, the view of scientific theories that is suggested by dualities (namely, a geometric view of theories) and the compatibility between duality and emergence.