Curie's Hazard: From Electromagnetism to Symmetry Violation

Pierre Curie claimed that a symmetry of a cause must be found in the produced effects. This paper shows why this principle works in Curie's example of the electrostatics of central fields, but fails in many others. The failure of Curie's claim is then shown to be of special empirical inter...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Erkenntnis 2016-10, Vol.81 (5), p.1011-1029
Main Author: Roberts, Bryan W.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Charge density
Curie, Pierre (1859-1906)
Education
Electric fields
Electromagnetic fields
Electromagnetism
Electrostatics
Epistemology
Ethics
Logic
Ontology
Original Article
Philosophy
Physics
Riemann manifold
Simply connected regions
Symmetry
Tensors
Vector curl
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Summary:Pierre Curie claimed that a symmetry of a cause must be found in the produced effects. This paper shows why this principle works in Curie's example of the electrostatics of central fields, but fails in many others. The failure of Curie's claim is then shown to be of special empirical interest, in that this failure underpins the experimental discovery of parity violation and of CP violation in the twentieth century.
ISSN:0165-0106
1572-8420
DOI:10.1007/s10670-015-9779-1