West Coast History of Science Society Meeting
University of California, San Francisco
April 11th - April 14th, 2002[Program]
Post-structuralist resources for tracing developments in mathematical physics
Ronald Anderson
Boston College
Visiting Scholar at the Office for the History of Science and Technology,
University of California, BerkeleyVarious themes in post-structuralist writings have provided a rich set of resources for exploring new ways in which texts and symbolic structures represent and constitute meaning. A number of these themes will be identified, and a provisional experimental project sketched of bringing such themes to bear on the ways mathematics is spoken about and given physical significance and meaning in physical theories. Given that mathematics forms the symbolic structure at the heart of physical theories such a project naturally arises as an intriguing possibility. There emerges the potential for interesting and new readings of episodes in mathematical physics, especially those where the physical significance and interpretation of mathematical structures have been contested issues. There follows too the possibility of a new attentiveness to theoretical practices that helps uncover their embedding in historical traditions and reveal their resonances with analogous practices in adjacent disciplinary and wider cultural contexts. Two examples will be introduced; one from 19th century British electromagnetism where a long discussion to do with the meaning of certain mathematical terms reveals resonances with a pervasive concern with issues of interpretation in the study of language, logic and mathematics in Victorian England, and the second, an exploration of the issues of interpretation of analogous terms in the context of quantum mechanics in a paper by Aharonov and Bohm in 1959.