Instruments and Arguments: Traditions of Laboratory Practice in Particle Physics

20世纪粒子物理学的历史通常以理论的划时代突破为周期：量子不连续（1900年）、狭义相对论（1905年）、广义相对论（1915年）、量子力学（1926年）、量子场论（1948年）等等。Galison博士认为，无论是在他之前获得总统青年研究者奖的工作中，还是在这个项目中，都有仪器的传统，它们具有相同程度的复杂性和部分自主性，而我们通常只将其归因于高级理论。此外，这些工具传统带有实验论证的特征形式，因此在接受和拒绝新的经验现象方面起着主要作用。加利森博士还在研究仪器的两个相互关联的特征：1)粒子物理探测器在20世纪早期分裂成一种产生高分辨率“黄金事件”的仪器传统（例如云室，核乳剂，气泡室）；以及产生“高统计”的竞争性仪器传统-大量事件，每个事件包含相对较少的信息（例如盖革-穆勒计数器，火花室，电线室）；(2)从20世纪30年代开始并在战时武器项目中加速发展的深刻的研究分工，使一个人无法参与实验事业的各个方面。规模的巨大扩张和两种传统之间的紧张关系共同提供了一个框架，可以在其中定位粒子探测器的历史。粒子物理探测器是物理学实验工作发生最大变化的地方。通过追溯这个实验物理学家内部密室的历史，人们不仅可以洞察“实验”一词不断变化的历史意义，还可以从不同的角度看到物理学与其所在的更广泛的技术文化之间的联系。

The history of 20th century particle physics has typically been periodized around the epochal breaks of theory: quantum discontinuity (1900), special relativity (1905), general relativity (1915), quantum mechanics (1926), quantum field theory (1948) and so on. Dr. Galison argues, both in his prior work supported by his Presidential Young Investigator Award, and in this project, that there are traditions of instrumentation with the same degree of complexity and partial autonomy that we usually ascribe only to high theory. Furthermore, these instrumental traditions carry with them characteristic forms of experimental demonstration and therefore play a primary role in the acceptance and rejection of new empirical phenomena. Dr. Galison is also investigating two interrelated features of instrumentation: 1) the split of particle physics detectors early in the 20th century into an instrument tradition that produces highly resolved "Golden Events" (e.g. the cloud chamber, the nuclear emulsion, the bubble chamber), and a competing instrument tradition that produces "high statistics" -- vast numbers of events with relatively little information contained about each event (e.g. the Geiger-Muller counter, the spark chamber, the wire chamber); 2) the profound division of research labor, beginning in the 1930's and accelerated in wartime weapon projects) that prevents one person from participating in all aspects of the experimental enterprise. Together the enormous expansion in scale and the tension between two traditions provide a framework in which to locate a history of particle detectors. Particle physics detectors are the site where experimental work in physics has undergone the greatest mutation. By tracing the history of this inner sanctum of the experimental physicist, one gains insight not only into the changing historical sense of the very term "experiment," one also sees in a different light the connections between physics and the wider technological culture in which it is situated.