The case of the composite Higgs: The model as a "Rosetta stone" in contemporary high-energy physics

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This paper analyses the practice of model-building "beyond the Standard Model" in contemporary high-energy physics and argues that its epistemic function can be grasped by regarding models as mediating between the phenomenology of the Standard Model and a number of "theoretical cores" of hybrid character, in which mathematical structures are combined with verbal narratives ("stories") and analogies referring back to empirical results in other fields ("empirical references"). Borrowing a metaphor from a physics research paper, model-building is likened to the search for a Rosetta stone, whose significance does not lie in its immediate content, but rather in the chance it offers to glimpse at and manipulate the components of hybrid theoretical constructs. I shall argue that the rise of hybrid theoretical constructs was prompted by the increasing use of nonrigorous mathematical heuristics in high-energy physics. Support for my theses will be offered in form of a historical-philosophical analysis of the emergence and development of the theoretical core centring on the notion that the Higgs boson is a composite particle. I will follow the heterogeneous elements which would eventually come to form this core from their individual emergence in the 1960s and 1970s, through their collective life as a theoretical core from 1979 until the present day.

Original languageEnglish
JournalStudies in History and Philosophy of Science Part B - Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics
Volume43
Issue number3
Pages (from-to)195-214
Number of pages20
ISSN1355-2198
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 08.2012
Externally publishedYes

    Research areas

  • Composite Higgs, High-energy physics, Model-building, Nonrigorous mathematics
  • Philosophy

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