Symbol and intuition in modern physics
pp. 149-175
in: Massimo Ferrari, Ion-Olimpiu Stamatescu (eds), Symbol and physical knowledge, Berlin, Springer, 2002Abstract
Physical theories are said to be non-intuitive, for they are formulated in the abstract and symbolic language of mathematics. At the same time, they are supposed to model real things, events or processes, that is, they are supposed to furnish ideal descriptions of actual states of applying inside or outside of a physical laboratory. Today, it is frequently suggested that it was the scientific revolutions of the 20th century which first presented us with abstract and non-intuitive theories and which led to serious problems of interpretation that shook our traditional understanding of reality. According to the classical conception, the concrete and intuitive meaning1 of physical theories and models counts as the necessary condition of their reference. Kant's theory of nature in particular ascribes to intuition the function of filling the semantic gap between the formal language of mathematical physics and the characterization of its empirical domain of objects. The physics of the 20th century, by contrast, developed theories and models for the world on a large as well as on a small scale which no longer correspond to the classical ideas. The special and general theories of relativity as well as the quantum-mechanical description of reality are compatible with an intuitive representation of their theoretical approaches and specific models only to a very limited extent.
