Abstract
AbstractLarge scale experiments at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider (LHC) rely heavily on computer simulations (CSs), a fact that has recently caught philosophers’ attention. CSs obviously require appropriate modeling, and it is a common assumption among philosophers that the relevant models can be ordered into hierarchical structures. Focusing on LHC’s ATLAS experiment, we will establish three central results here: (a) with some distinct modifications, individual components of ATLAS’ overall simulation infrastructure can be ordered into hierarchical structures. Hence, to a good degree of approximation, hierarchical accounts remain valid at least as descriptive accounts of initial modeling steps. (b) In order to perform the epistemic function Winsberg (in Magnani L, Nersessian N, Thagard P (eds) Model-based reasoning in scientific discovery. Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York, pp 255–269, 1999) assigns to models in simulation—generate knowledge through a sequence of skillful but non-deductive transformations—ATLAS’ simulation models have to be considered part of a network rather than a hierarchy, in turn making the associated simulation modeling messy rather than motley. Deriving knowledge-claims from this ‘mess’ requires two sources of justification: (i) holistic validation (also Lenhard and Winsberg in Stud Hist Philos Sci Part B Stud Hist Philos Modern Phys 41(3):253–262, 2010; in Carrier M, Nordmann A (eds) Science in the context of application. Springer, Berlin, pp 115–130, 2011), and (ii) model coherence. As it turns out, (c) the degree of model coherence sets HEP apart from other messy, simulation-intensive disciplines such as climate science, and the reasons for this are to be sought in the historical, empirical and theoretical foundations of the respective discipline.
Funder
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Subject
General Social Sciences,Philosophy
Reference65 articles.
1. Amati, D., & Veneziano, G. (1979). Preconfinement as a property of perturbative QCD. Physics Letters B, 83(1), 87–92.
2. Assamagan, K. A., Baranov, S., Boudreau, J., Tsulaia, V., Nairz, A., Lelchuk, I. T. M., et al. (2005). The description of the ATLAS detector. In A. Aimar, J. Harvey, & N. Knoors (Eds.), CHEP’04: Proceedings of computing in high energy and nuclear physics (Vol. I, pp. 321–324). Geneva: CERN.
3. ATLAS Collaboration. (2008). The atlas experiment at the cern large hadron collider. Jinst, 3, S08003.
4. ATLAS Collaboration. (2010). The ATLAS simulation infrastructure. The European Physical Journal C, 70(3), 823–874.
5. ATLAS Computing Group (2005). Computing technical design report. Technical report, CERN. https://cds.cern.ch/record/837738/files/lhcc-2005-022.pdf (checked 11/18).
Cited by
8 articles.
订阅此论文施引文献
订阅此论文施引文献,注册后可以免费订阅5篇论文的施引文献,订阅后可以查看论文全部施引文献