More than Nothing: Histories of the Vacuum in Theoretical Physics, 1927-1981

This dissertation is an historical ontology of the vacuum in theoretical physics from Dirac to Zeldovich. It traces changing views of the ontology of the vacuum though communities of both quantum theorists and general ``relativists.'' Rather than a traditional micro study of one actor, or a small group of connected actors, it is a ``meso'' history, following the idea of the vacuum across approximately 55 years and from the United States to the Soviet Union. This meso-scale analysis allows me to mediate between the individual concerns of historical actors at the chapter-level and a broader historical-philosophical question at the dissertation-level: how can we be realists about unobservable theoretical entities like the vacuum in the light of changing ontologies? However, too fine a distinction must not be drawn between ontologies and epistemologies here. An overall theme of the dissertation is the connection between the tools theorists used and their ontological pictures. Chapters cover P.A.M. Dirac; Julian Schwinger and Richard Feynman; John Archibald Wheeler; Roger Penrose; Sidney Coleman; and Vladimir Fock and Yakov Zeldovich. All chapters are based on archival research except the final body-chapter on Fock and Zeldovich, which is based on materials in translation. I make a positive case for the claim that one can be a realist about theoretical entities like the vacuum only when considered from a Deluezian, differential perspective. Difference is put forth as a creative engine for science.Ph.D.2017-06-16 00:00:0