Two Kinds of Discovery: An Ontological Account

TL;DR

This paper explores the ontological nature of discovery, distinguishing between actual entities and pure possibilities, and illustrates how discovering pure possibilities underpins discovering actual entities like particles.

Contribution

It provides an ontological framework distinguishing actual and possible entities, emphasizing the role of pure possibilities in scientific discovery.

Findings

Discoveries of pure possibilities include particles like the Higgs boson and neutrinos.

Actual discoveries depend on prior identification of pure possibilities.

The paper clarifies the ontological status of entities in scientific discovery.

Abstract

What can we discover? As the discussion in this paper is limited to ontological considerations, it does not deal with the discovery of new concepts. It raises the following question: What are the entities or existents that we can discover? There are two kinds of such entities: (1) actual entities, and (2) possible entities, which are pure possibilities. The paper explains why the first kind of discovery depends primarily on the second kind. The paper illustrates the discoveries of individual pure possibilities by presenting examples such as the Higgs particle, Dirac's positron, and Pauli-Fermi's neutrino.