Doctoral Dissertation Research: Quantum Physics and the Future

在苏珊·哈丁的指导下，博士生克里斯托弗·科克伦将采用民族志方法来研究物理实践中塑造主观性和学科权威的规范方面。他还将记录其他科学家与量子物理学家合作或使用量子物理学家工作的方式，例如与理论物理学家合作将量子场论的数学技术应用于神经元网络的精神病学家，以及希望身心问题的悖论可以用量子物理的概念解决的分析哲学家。联合PI将调查对未来的担忧如何牵涉到发明阐明科学问题的新方法和获得答案的新方法的尝试中，并可能导致一种新的社会/科学形态的创建。这项研究承诺通过鼓励人们理解经验主义和投机论之间的差异，来促进对量子物理的科学素养。在完成论文后，这位合作者计划将他的研究成果出版成一本面向广大公众的书。

Under the supervision of Susan Harding, Ph.D. student Christopher Cochran will adopt an ethnographic approach to study of the normative aspects of physics practice that shape subjectivity and the authority of the discipline. He will also document the ways that other scientists are collaborating with or using the work of quantum physicists, e.g. psychiatrists who collaborate with theoretical physicists to apply mathematical techniques of quantum field theory to neuronal networks, and analytic philosophers who hope that paradoxes of the mind-body problem can be fixed with concepts from quantum physics. The co-PI will investigate how concerns about the future are implicated in attempts to invent new ways of articulating scientific questions and new methods to obtain answers and may result in the creation of a new social/scientific formation. The research promises to promote scientific literacy about quantum physics by encouraging understanding of the difference between empiricism and speculation. After completing the dissertation the co-PI plans on publishing his results as a book aimed at a wide public audience.