(Received October 19, 1973)
It is about fifteen years since we started a collaborative research on cosmic-ray phenomena of multiple production of mesons. At the beginning it was an experiment with a small piece of nuclear emulsion stack flown by a hand-made polyethylene balloon. Due to difficulties in obtaining opportunities for a large scale experiment, main activities of our collaborative study had to be restricted to small test experiments and theoretical work. Our technique of the emulsion chamber and idea of the fire-ball was conceived through efforts in poor conditions of such primary stage of the study.
At present we now arrive at the experimental conclusion on existence of the H-quantum, an elementary unit of a fire-ball, through a large scale experiment of Japan-Brazil collaboration. Moreover, our way of investigation at Mt. Chacaltaya is found promising for studies of cosmic-ray phenomena of still higher energies. Thus, our collaborative study is going into a new stage of development. We believe that it is important to look back in this moment at the way which we followed in our study during these fifteen years. This is not for a purely historical interest, but its motivation is to make clear a logic of the research which we unconsciously followed through up to the present time. A critical survey of such kind will certainly provide a basis for future progress of the study.
Here one should refer to Taketani's philosophy which proposes
existence of the three stages in process of scientific cognition. The
theory claims that progress of science is always realized in a spiral
way and a step in the spiral coil of scientific cognition is
performed through the following three stages: the phenomenological
(an sich), the substantialistic (für sich) and
the essentialistic (an und für sich) stage. He himself
applied the philosophy in coordinating the collaborative theoretical
studies on mesons after proposal of Yukawa through and after the
war-time and established a number of remarkable successes. We will
look ourselves in this mirror of Taketani's philosophy.
Scientific research itself is an integration of various activities. Our collaboration work of cosmic-rays is not an exception, because our problem is consisted of various items, such as, techniques of emulsion chambers, cascade showers and other related electromagnetic processes, diffusion of various components of cosmic-rays in atmosphere, and many others. But, we will concentrate in this paper exclusively on problems of models of the multiple production of mesons. The reason is not only of its primary importance. It is one of the problems, the governing principle of which is completely unknown. We will have no coordinate system of reference in analysing a problem of such type without a help of philosophical reasoning.
URL :
http://ptp.ipap.jp/link?PTPS/54/17/
DOI : 10.1143/PTPS.54.17