“Then, they had insisted that only empirical criteria matter and that they actually did not believe in the reality of sub-atomic entities.”

Certain issues in philosophy of science (having to do with observation and the definition of a theory’s empirical import) had beenmisconstrued as issues in philosophy of logic and of language. With respect to modality.

Ask “If that turned out to be true, would you still say they were good scientists?” The answer would reveal something about how they themselves understood what it is to be a scientist.

To develop an empiricist account of science is to depict it as involving a search for truth only about the empirical world, aboutwhat is actual and observable….

It must involve throughout a resolute rejection of the demand for an explanation of the regularities in the observable course of nature,

I hold the exact opposite: important philosophical problems concerning language have been misconstrued as relating to the content of science and the nature of the world. This is not at all new, but is the traditional nominalist line.

By means of truths concerning a reality beyond what is actual and observable, as a demand which plays no role in the scientific enterprise.

Philosophers often think all scientists must be scientific realists. If you ask a simple question like “Are electrons real?” the answer will be “Yes”. But if your questions are less superficial, for example whether some well-known scientist was a good scientist.

The whole edifice of modern physics is built up on the fundamental hypothesis of the atomic or molecular constitution of matter.

The profoundly ‘atomic’ character of the universe is visible in everyday experience, in raindrops and grains of sand, in the hosts of the living, and the multitude of stars; even in the ashes of the dead.

In Germany, an effort one thousandth the scale of the American was applied to the problem of producing atomic energy that would drive engines.

If we made atomic bombs, we would bring about a terrible change in the world. Who knows what would happen from this?

In America, it was decided to attempt the production of atomic bombs with an effort that would constitute a large part of the collective American war effort.

The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.

Young Baby Boomers were forced to play duck-and-cover in school, in hopes that a desk would protect them from an atomic explosion. It was all bullshit, and they knew it.