Ontologiczne zaangażowania współczesnej fizyki

Abstract

The paper deals with the mutual relationship between theories of modern physics and an ontological perspective of the world. Two particular questions are touched upon: first, how different „philosophical ontologies” influence developments of empirical theories, and, second, do scientific theories presuppose any ontological assumptions? Within the context of the first question, ontologies of substance, process, and event are discussed. Ontologies centred at men are also commented upon. As far as the second question is concerned, it is argued that the existence of the world is not assumed, even tacitly, by any empirical theory. All scientific statements are of the conditional form: if the world exists,... Although this condition is seldom expressed explicitly. However, one could ask about „ontological commitments” of scientific theories: if investigated objects do exist, which structure should be ascribed to them? For a mathematical theory, it is, in principici, possible to reconstruct its univers de discours. As far as an empirical theory is concerned, the term „ontological commitment” usually means its more or less intuitive interpretation. Such interpretations for classical mechanics, quantum mechanics and relativity theory are briefly discussed. Every interpretation must be consistent with a given theory, i. e. with its mathematical formalism and its empirical predictions. One can change freely from one such interpretation to another. Therefore, no interpretation informs us what a given theory is about. A hypothesis is put forward that those elements, which are preserved when one goes from one interpretation to another („interpretation invariants”) are what the theory is about. They are some structural elements common to all admissible interpretations. A useful analogy is the „meaning” which could be defined as an invariant of all possible translations of a given text from one language to another.