Search for the Higgs boson: the problem of epistemic autonomy of experiment
The article discusses experiments in particle physics that attempt to detect the last missing element of the Standard Model of particle interactions, the Higgs boson. It critically analyzes the positivistic proposals according to which such experiments must be recognized as exploratory and crucial on the one hand and as relatively autonomous from the theory on the other. The author examines the role of the Higgs mechanism as an ad hoc hypothesis introduced initially to overcome the problem of the invariance of the theory. Theory-laden operations of preparation and measurement of Higgs boson in collider experiments are analyzed; methods for analysis of experimental data and methods of their theoretical interpretation are discussed. A special consideration is given to the role of such routes of theory-ladenness as the experimental background and triggers. The suggestions to view this experiment as relatively independent of the theory, as well as the underlying concept of signatures (certain features in the interpreted data), in which theoretical models are “blackboxed”, are scrutinized. The paper shows that the role and functions of the signature in the experiment can be understood semiotically only taking into account the phenomenal theory and its determinant role in the formation of signatures. The author argues that the proposed criteria for the crucial experiment characterize not so much the experiment as the theory, while the experiment itself remains subject to the historical criterion of Lakatos. The author proposes that the beliefs about the critical and exploratory character of the Higgs Boson experiments are elicited by the neglect of the fact of ladenness of signatures by the phenomenal theories and the insufficient selectivity of the collider experiments in relation to the theoretical models.