Whatever Happened to the Philosopher Physicist?
At the core of this discussion is a quote by science philosopher Paul Feerabend (from For and Against Method, dug up by Steve Hsu, which focuses on the "savage" nature of the mid-twentieth century theoretical physics who, as opposed to their predecessors Einstein, Bohr, and the rest, didn't particularly care about philosophical concerns.
Sean Carroll over at Cosmic Variance points out that this might also be related of the shift of physics' intellectual center from Europe (which has always had a broader intellectual tradition, and a deeper interest in philosophy) to America (where specialization is more the norm).
I'm more European in outlook. I attended a liberal arts college where I majored in physics and minored in philosophy (along with mathematics), so I tend to be fairly sympathetic to the old school physicists, who sought to understand nature instead of just predicting the results of experiments. Still, the point can't be avoided - physics without philosophy has been wildly successful.
It's unclear that the addition of philosophy would benefit physics in any practical way. The real progress in quantum physics came about only when the philosophy - the bickering between Einstein, Bohr, and others - was swept under the rug. Don't get me wrong - the bickering was immensely fascinating and entertaining, but it proved to be a distraction which never really resolved anything. Today, the philosophical questions about quantum physics (which were originally the core question of the theory) are ignored and dismissed by physicists.
Of course, there are those on the periphery of physics who feel that the philosophical insights are the ones that need added back into the field, but they are by far the minority. They point out that the great revolutions of physics were performed by men who were deeply philosophical - Newton, Faraday, Einstein, Boltzmann, and Bohr come to mind. Today, we may need such a revolution to advance physics and some claim that this must go hand-in-hand with a philosophical resurgence.
While there may be some merit to this line of reasoning, until their philosophical insights can join back with physical insights to provide a solid prediction, I'm afraid that philosophy and physics will probably remain divorced disciplines.
Insightful. “A mind all logic is like a knife all blade.”
This was a very interesting article… insightful and well written. This makes me wish there were more of both areas in my life… alas, I am a life-sciences kind of gal…have a great day
It may well be that physics cant learn a lot from philosophy, but you forget the other way around. I do believe that physics can grant great new insights in many philosophical questions. Alas most philosophers arent good enough at physics to understand the implications it has on philosophy. And the great physicists dont understand enough philosophy well enough to help there, though many great physicists try out philosophy, especially when they grew old, and there great days in physics are over. I believe that this could be solved if physicists and philosophers are learning to work together. The days one scientist can solve great questions are well gone, since the questions tend to become to complex for 1 mind alone. Perhaps a new school of philosophy would be a great help here, one in which next to philosophers also scientists help solve the problems.
I am a philosopher-scientist. My book on the nature of reality is free on the web.
The title of my book is ’structure of existence”
I think in terms of science, but the ideas wind up going where science does not go. Call it scientific metaphysics. One area examined closely is the self-contradiction of Godel.
Physics, as the science of physical interactions on any scale, should be understood logically and be understood without any need for emotional human thought. The development of physical laws and theories with heavy dependence on mathematics recognizes the need for logic without emotion. Allowing one’s cultural beliefs about ethics, aesthetics, religion, …etc. to give direction to fundamental scientific research is not just wasted effort but counterproductive. One’s philosophy is always uniquely personal and has no place in a scientific discussion.
My most cherished discipline on earth is going into extinction.Why?This is young people no longer embrace this father of all sciences.There is a global shortage of physics philosophers.Even the interested ones are taken care of.Let us new generation physicists rise up and face this challenge.
I don’t think that the value of philosophy to physics depends upon whether or not a philosophical insight can yield “a solid prediction.” New philosophical insights into the nature of physical reality aren’t going to overturn the laws and predictions of quantum mechanics. But such insights might give us a more unified, a more elegant, conception of reality than we currently have ["a photon is a particle except when it is a wave, and vice versa"]. A good example of this is Wave-Particle Duality wherein the author argues that physicists have ignored the ontological assumptions their discipline rests on and suggests that there is no justification for treating the photon as if it were a classical-style projectile that impacts. I agree that especially in America the physicists have become highly specialized, but so have the philosophers of science. As a result the two groups can hardly talk to each other. Quite a change from two generations ago.
In regards to philosophers and physicists.
I agree that phiosophy may have been somewhat’abandoned’ by many physicists after Einstein and Bohr,
but to me it inevitable that we be philosophers again in physics.
The proof of this is for example in your own statement that …. “I tend to be fairly sympathetic to the old school physicists, who sought to understand nature instead of just predicting the results of experiments”.
We are at or near a place where it is becoming increasingly very difficult ( to perhaps impossible ? ) for experimental results to be predicting or telling us anything about the nature of the universe at the smallest and grandest scales.
In fact there is to date no proof what so ever that string theory(s) are even true or close to reality!
yet this is the main stream of university physics in the world today.
With out experimental proof to lead the way ,there will be a need to adopt some kind of philosophical attitude about just what is the nature of the universe in the same way that men like Socrates, Aristotle, Einstein,eSpinosa and many others did .
How can you not be a philosopher when you contemplate the possible meanings that may be behind such things as quantum entanglement, relativity,space, time and so on.
How can we claim that logic by itself is all we need when it cannot answer all our questions and cannot perhaps even ask the right ones (such as string theories?). Philosphy may not be needed, but it at least allows perspective on what is possible.
The article and the insights of readers were wonderful.I would like to mention a few points that i found missing:
Philosophy and physics are very different (if we see their exact meanings).But both are sciences which have huge importance for us(independently and together).
For understanding, teaching and discovering new things, people tend to make analogies. Physics and philosophy make one of the best pair (of sciences) for this purpose(analyzing).
Whenever a result was reached in physics that tends to be aligned with philosophy(of a particular time) it was a relief for the philosophers but when it didn’t it created mess because now the philosophy didn’t have enough ideas to fit in both the sciences into a single framework.
If it is realized that the friction between them occurs only when we start believing that one dictates the other, all problems will be solved. Also this friction is inevitable until both the sciences grow together. Historically,we can see that, when viewed within a single framework, these make the best pair for fast development of science.
So the best solution is that both the sciences be subjects of the same mind.
Physicists, like everyone else, struggle to make sense out of reality because they are mentally dogged by learned, culturally acceptable habits of thought which began in their early childhood. Clearly, their philosophical ideas have roots in early childhood. Apparently, some physicists still enjoy giving emotional expression to those long held views, an activity which may generate myth, but it doesn’t advance physics. However, rigorous math and logic has advanced physics, and it is always understood and readily accepted across cultural barriers. Hopefully at some time in the future physicists will allow themselves the freedom of thought to set aside cultural influences, to accept reality without feeling the need to provide elegant answers to philosophical questions and to freely engage in metaphysical explanations of reality in a noncompetitive atmosphere.
Krupa states that philosophy is a science. I think it is useful to see philosophy as NOT a science.
Otherwise, for a pedantic example, ‘philosophy of science’ becomes a mere tautology whereas it should be able to (and does) illuminate the activities of physicists and other scientists.
I think there are many cases, and this is one of them, where placing a subject inappropriately in the category of science extends the attributes of science so much that the word ’science’ becomes a catch all for anything and therefore loses ontological usefulness.
In the case of philosophy, classifying it as a science is even worse because it seems to make philosophy incapable of examining science without fatal self-reference. (Or maybe this is the point!)
I also think that philosophy is not part of science. It does not meet any definition of science that I know of. It is a field that should be developed, but not in the science department. I also worry that theoretical physics is getting to far out there. We have to remember that when we look at the universe we are looking into the past not the future. Our perspective is skewing our perseption.
Most of our current breed of scientists have all they can do to try and undestand the work of the giants on whose shoulders they stand. Sadly, a great many of them simply do not have the capacity to think outside ‘the box’. Any box. Modern physics and mathematics are founded upon coffee house philosophy. A meeting of great minds seems to no longer occur in any social situation. Great minds seem to seek solitude and the safe, unself-examining shelter it brings. Arrogance in our child scientists also play a great part. Great ideas are born of the friction of great minds rubbing against each other. Differing ideas are greeted with derision. Thus it has always been. And what does one do when one cannot talk to anyone who can grasp the idea one is attempting to communicate? Sigh. Nobody wants to talk about anything fun or mind bending…