Tracing the Development of the Virtual Particle Concept Using Semantic Change Detection
This work addresses the history and philosophy of science community by offering a computational method to analyze conceptual evolution, though it is incremental as it applies existing SCD techniques to a new domain.
The study tackled the problem of tracing the development of the virtual particle concept in physics by applying Semantic Change Detection (SCD) based on a domain-adapted BERT model, finding that SCD metrics aligned with qualitative research and dependency parsing while providing additional insights, such as increased stability and polysemy after 1950.
Virtual particles are peculiar objects. They figure prominently in much of theoretical and experimental research in elementary particle physics. But exactly what they are is far from obvious. In particular, to what extent they should be considered "real" remains a matter of controversy in philosophy of science. Also their origin and development has only recently come into focus of scholarship in the history of science. In this study, we propose using the intriguing case of virtual particles to discuss the efficacy of Semantic Change Detection (SCD) based on contextualized word embeddings from a domain-adapted BERT model in studying specific scientific concepts. We find that the SCD metrics align well with qualitative research insights in the history and philosophy of science, as well as with the results obtained from Dependency Parsing to determine the frequency and connotations of the term "virtual." Still, the metrics of SCD provide additional insights over and above the qualitative research and the Dependency Parsing. Among other things, the metrics suggest that the concept of the virtual particle became more stable after 1950 but at the same time also more polysemous.