Adrian Wüthrich
University of Bern, Switzerland
Academic Year 2011-12
Diagnostic Causal Inferences In Quantum Mechanics

Adrian obtained his PhD in 2009 with a dissertation on the genesis of Feynman diagrams. Since 2010, he has been a postdoctoral researcher at the Department for History and Philosophy of Science, University of Bern, Switzerland. Apart from pursuing further topics related to his dissertation, his research focuses on locality and causality principles in quantum mechanics and the methodology of modern particle physics.

He loves riding his bicycle to work and also doing other sports whenever possible. He looks forward to having explained to him the architectural merits of Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallingwater by his wife Magdalena and to missing Mario Lemieux in the line-up of the Pittsburgh Penguins.

June 2013

Current position: Wissenschaftlicher
Mitarbeiter in History of Science at the "Institut fuer Philosophie, Literatur, Wissenschafts und Technikgeschichte" at the Technical University Berlin

Articles revised/begun/completed during fellowship at CPS:

“Eating Goldstone bosons in a phase transition: A critical review of Lyre’s
analysis of the Higgs mechanism”. Forthcoming in: Journal for General
Philosophy of Science.

“Methoden des Nachweises von Elementarteilchen: Die (Wieder-)Entdeckung des W-
Bosons 1983 und 2010”. In: MetaATLAS. Ed. by G. Graßhoff and A. Wüthrich. Bern:
Bern Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, 2012

“Interpreting Feynman Diagrams as visualized models”.
Under revision for: Spontaneous Generations: A Journal for the History and
Philosophy of Science

“Locality, Causality, and Realism in the Derivation of Bell’s Inequality”.
Forthcoming in (partially self-edited volume): Proceedings of “Decoherence and
No-Signalling: Current Interpretational Problems of Quantum Theory”. Ed. by T.
Sauer and A. Wüthrich. Berlin: Edition Open Access

“Against the impossible picture: Feynman’s heuristics in his search for a
divergence-free quantum electrodynamics”. Re-submitted to: Physics and
Philosophy

Talks during fellowship at CPS:

“History of Quantum Electrodynamics”. Cargèse (Corsica), April 17, 2012

“History and Philosophy of Feynman Diagrams”. Caltech, January 27, 2012

“Splitting the Hairs of Locality: How and Why?”. Lunchtime talk, CPS,
September 27, 2012

“Minimal Assumptions Derivation of a Bell-Type Inequality”. Carnegie Mellon
University, Pittsburgh, September 8, 2012

2014 Update

Recent publications:

"Local Acausality"

"Feynman’s Struggle and Dyson’s Surprise"

Review of "The Birth of String Theory" in: Isis, 104(3), pp. 639-640, 2013

2016 Update

Recent publication:

The Higgs Discovery as a Diagnostic Causal Inference. Synthese, 2015.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0941-8.

Grant:

I am one of 12 principal investigators and collaborators who received
funding for setting up an interdisciplinary research unit on the
"Epistemology of the Large Hadron Collider."
http://www.lhc-epistemologie.uni-wuppertal.de

2017

Publications in 2016:

"Heisenberg's Umdeutung: A case for a (quantum-)dialogue between history
and philosophy of science". In: The philosophy of historical case
studies. Ed. by Tilman Sauer and Raphael Scholl. Boston Studies in the
Philosophy and History of Science. Springer. Pp. 285-296.
Review of: "The Quantum Dissidents. Rebuilding the Foundations of
Quantum Mechanics (1950-1990). Olival Freire Junior" in Isis, 107(2),
pp. 446-447.