Guy Hetzroni

Justification of Theoretical Methods and Modelling Principles

Can we trust mathematical reasoning in sciences that are supposed to answer to empirical evidence? How can abstract mathematical methods of theory construction be justified when evidence is scarce? Under what conditions are scientists justified in transporting a mathematical modelling technique from one domain to another?

In Theory Construction and the Projectability of Meta-Inductive Arguments (Synthese, 2025) I proposed a framework to address such questions in various scientific contexts, based on the notion of projectability. The approach is anchored in the idea that meta-level scientific reasoning and justifications should be guided by the same standards that guide scientific practice.

History and Philosophy of Quantum Theory

I recently conducted two oral-history interviews with Yakir Aharonov: Theoretical Discovery, Experiment, and Controversy in the Aharonov-Bohm Effect (EPJH, 2025) and A Personal History in Quantum Foundations: An Oral History Interview (EPJH, forthcoming 2026). I am interested in the ideas and historical changes that led to the conceptualization of entanglement and the rise of quantum foundations from the late 1950s, and in the question of why this did not happen earlier.

Earlier papers are Measurements, Preparations, and Interpretations in Quantum Theory: A Comment on Meehan (BJPS, 2024) and Physical Systems, Mathematical Representation, and Philosophical Principles: The EPR Paper and Its Influence (Iyyun, 2020; in Hebrew), published together with the Hebrew translation of the EPR paper (JSTOR), on which I advised. During my PhD I also wrote Protective Measurements and the PBR Theorem (2015) and GHZ States as Tripartite PR Boxes: Classical Limit and Retrocausality (Entropy, 2018) with Daniel Rohrlich.

Symmetry and Invariance

Symmetry considerations and invariance arguments provide one of the most puzzling examples of the role of mathematics in physics. In Gauge and Ghosts (BJPS, 2021) I examined the relation of the gauge argument to relational quantities in a quantum context. See also Relativity and Equivalence in Hilbert Space (Foundations of Physics, 2020) and Mathematical Analogies in Physics: The Curious Case of Gauge Symmetries (with Noah Stemeroff, 2023) for further implications of this analysis. The most recent presentation of this heuristics-first approach to gauge is found in How to Teach General Relativity (with James Read, BJPS).

I also took part in writing what is probably the most collaborative Cambridge Element: Gauge Symmetries, Symmetry Breaking, and Gauge-Invariant Approaches (with Philipp Berghofer, Jordan François, Simon Friederich, Henrique Gomes, Axel Maas, and René Sondenheimer, CUP 2023). It reviews how the concept of gauge came to be employed in particle physics, and defends the value of approaches that avoid breaking the gauge symmetry in the context of the Higgs mechanism and beyond.

Conceptual Foundations of Relativistic Gravity

In How to Teach General Relativity (with James Read, BJPS) we suggested a reconstruction of the basic structure of Einstein's general theory of relativity which (a) does not presuppose the geometrization of gravity, (b) is instead motivated by the locality of the evidence supporting the special theory of relativity, (c) is analogous to my analysis of the gauge argument, and (d) preserves some core elements of Einstein's early reasoning towards the theory. Stay tuned for more explorations of the implications of this approach for attempts to go beyond general relativity.