Speaker
Description
The study of particle signatures at High Energy Colliders provides a concrete context to think about pattern identification in experimental data. An inquiry into pattern identification in relation to particle signatures stands to yield new insights on long-standing philosophical questions about patterns (highlighted in an influential paper by Dennett), such as their relationship to phenomena (Bogen and Woodward, Feest), or their dependence on theory and on the epistemic objectives of inquiries (McAllister). Discussions about the relationship between data and data models (Suppes, Harris, Leonelli) also provide interesting perspectives on the evidential role of patterns in experimental knowledge. In this presentation, we use particle signatures, such as that of the electron, to reflect on the notion of pattern. We analyze in detail the data analyses performed by the ATLAS Collaboration at CERN that serve to identify electron signatures, to support a new framing of patterns in pragmatist terms. We have used a pragmatist framework previously to address important philosophical problems related to exploratory experimentation, the usefulness of measurements, and measurement uncertainty and its relation to underdetermination. While our account integrates some of the important points about patterns made by or inferred from the work of Harris, McAllister, and Leonelli, it addresses some gaps in and shortcomings of their views. We provide an account of patterns as resources to be used in an inquiry to yield useful scientific claims. Their usefulness in inquiry depends on a transformative process of "entheorization" that intertwines theory and experimental practices together. It also depends on decisions, made in light of experimental objectives, about tradeoffs between signal purity and efficiency, and regarding acceptable uncertainties. The assertability of conclusions reached through these aim-guided processes rests upon their being subjected to a critical mode of inquiry.
The picture that emerges from this study of the relationship between data, patterns in data, and particle signatures, represents a challenge to a view of signatures as providing a stable and theory-agnostic representation of electrons or their experimental behavior. Rather, signatures constitute a means – a resource – for entheorizing data into useful patterns that in turn support experimental objectives.