Articulating values to scaffold diverse approaches to physics theories

Students rarely, if ever, encounter models of persistent and productive disagreements in physics. This lack plausibly leaves them underprepared to contribute to the modern physics community, where progress often comes from researchers with incompatible approaches to one and the same theory [1]. How can we prepare students for this reality in a course with sharply-defined physics content learning goals? Philosophy of physics can help, by identifying some key values for theories informing incompatible researcher approaches—such as, for example, whether a theory should avoid action-at-a-distance or have an easily-visualizable ontology. We present an example of a curriculum for an undergraduate quantum mechanics course structured around the identification of such values for theories, on which students are expected to develop personal and well-informed opinions.

[1] Gibney, E. (2025). Physicists disagree wildly on what quantum mechanics says about reality, Nature survey shows. Nature, 643, 1175-1179. https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-025-02342-y