The Exigencies of War and the Stink of a Theoretical Problem: Understanding the Genesis of Feynman's Quantum Electrodynamics as Mechanistic Modelling at Different Levels (2018)
In 1949, Richard Feynman (1918–1988) published the essentials of his solution to the recalcitrant problems that plagued quantum theories of electrodynamics of his days (Feynman 1949a). The main problem was that the theory, that was considered to be correct and often led to correct observable consequences, also implied that some quantities should be infinite, while by common sense or empirical evidence they were finite. Feynman devised a method of solving the relevant theoretical equations in which particular combinations of elementary solutions yielded empirically adequate results even when applied to complex problems. The combination of the basic solutions was guided by relatively simple graphical considerations as to how the elements that represented elementary interactions of electrons and light quanta could be put together to form a complex diagram. Much of Feynman's method relied on a diagrammatic representation of the physical processes as well as, at the same time, of the mathematical expressions used to describe the processes quantitatively. Ever since their first appearance, these Feynman diagrams (Figure 1), as they came to be known, have been extensively used in theoretical particle physics to calculate reaction rates and other observable, or otherwise relevant, quantities. After making their initial "leap" out of Feynman's head about the year 1948 they took the world in a rapid "dispersion" and were put to a wide variety of uses (Kaiser 2005). It has been widely acknowledged that Feynman's approach to the difficulties in finding a quantum theory of electrodynamics was idiosyncratic, although it may be hard to say what the characteristics of his style exactly were (see, e.g., Schweber 1986a). A conspicuous feature of his approach certainly was his prominent use of diagrams in his publications on the topic and the way he used them in a peculiar mix of diagrammatic, physical, and mathematical reasoning. One goal of the present article is to identify characteristic aspects of the way in which Feynman was developing his version of quantum electrodynamics (QED) at different stages of his early career (i.e., up to 1949). But I will also discuss the question of which circumstances or events might have been responsible for Feynman's exhibiting different characteristic methods at different times. Finally, I will contrast my findings with similar studies, especially with Peter Galison's, in which Feynman's war-related work takes center stage (Galison 1998). To a considerable extent, I will build on my own reconstruction of the genesis of Feynman diagrams, which in turn is based on my selection of documents from the Feynman Papers hosted at the California Institute of Technology (Wüthrich 2010).
...MoreArticle James Robert Brown (2018) Introduction. Perspectives on Science (pp. 419-422).
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