Descrizione del progetto
Raggiungere nuove conoscenze: il caso di una collaborazione nella fisica delle particelle
In che modo le nuove conoscenze vengono generate e convalidate nelle collaborazioni di ricerca moderne su larga scala? Il progetto NEPI, finanziato dall’UE, si propone di rispondere a questa domanda fondamentaleutilizzando strumenti all’avanguardia delle scienze umanistiche digitali e concentrando l’attenzione sulla collaborazione ATLAS presso il laboratorio di fisica delle particelle del CERN. La collaborazione ATLAS, insieme a un altro gruppo di ricerca, è nota soprattutto per la scoperta della particella di Higgs nel 2012. Il progetto svilupperà inoltre linee guida storiografiche trasferibili a futuri studi epistemologici sulle collaborazioni scientifiche moderne. Il lavoro svolto nell’ambito di NEPI offrirà un quadro completo delle recenti prassi di ricerca nella fisica delle particelle e in altre discipline, contribuendo contemporaneamente alla filosofia relativa alla generazione delle conoscenze collettive.
Obiettivo
The present project will contribute to research in the history and philosophy of science through extensive use of state-of-the-art tools from the digital humanities. The project will focus on an investigation of recent research practice in particle physics at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) in order to gain a better understanding of how knowledge is generated and validated in very large scientific collaborations. The main working hypothesis of the project is that collective research processes can be characterized, in epistemologically relevant terms, through a bird’s eye view analysis of the collaboration’s internal communication. The internal communication will be reconstructed from born-digital documents (e-mails, internal wiki pages, etc.) which accrue in the research practice of the collaboration. Abstracting from the case study, the project will also develop historiographic guidelines that can be transferred to future epistemological studies of modern scientific collaborations. Last but not least, the project will contribute to the philosophy of collective knowledge generation, in particular to recent issues in “network epistemology”, by adapting the theoretical models to better fit important real-world cases.
Until recently, it was nearly impossible to capture large-scale and complex research processes, such as the ones at CERN, and make them accessible for epistemological analysis. Almost all the studies of the research practice at CERN or similar cases have so far been restricted to the analysis of published articles, selected interviews and participant observation. Accompanied by historiographic guidelines and practical strategies (both of which are lacking at the moment) for best practices in the history and philosophy of science based on born-digital sources, the application of digital tools and computational methods may finally help us attain a maximally comprehensive picture of recent research practice in particle physics and beyond.
Campo scientifico
- humanitiesphilosophy, ethics and religionphilosophyepistemology
- natural sciencesphysical sciencestheoretical physicsparticle physics
- humanitieshistory and archaeologyhistory
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencescomputational science
- humanitiesother humanitieslibrary sciencesdigital humanities
Programma(i)
- HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC) Main Programme
Argomento(i)
Meccanismo di finanziamento
HORIZON-AG - HORIZON Action Grant Budget-BasedIstituzione ospitante
10623 Berlin
Germania