Steve Hsu pulls out a provocative quote from philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend:
The withdrawal of philosophy into a “professional” shell of its own has had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth — and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism which you are now defending.
It’s probably true that the post-WWII generations of leading physicists were less broadly educated than their pre-war counterparts (although there are certainly counterexamples such as Murray Gell-Mann and Steven Weinberg). The simplest explanation for this phenomenon would be that the center of gravity of scientific research switched from Europe to America after the war, and the value of a broad-based education (and philosophy in particular) has always been less in America. Interestingly, Feyerabend seems to be blaming philosophers themselves — “the withdrawal of philosophy into a `professional’ shell” — rather than physicists or any wider geosocial trends.
But aside from whether modern physicists (and maybe scientists in other fields, I don’t know) pay less attention to philosophy these days, and aside from why that might be the case, there is still the question: does it matter? Would knowing more philosophy have made any of the post-WWII giants better physicists? There are certainly historical counterexamples one could conjure up: the acceptance of atomic theory in the German-speaking world in the late nineteenth century was held back considerably by Ernst Mach‘s philosophical arguments. On the other hand, Einstein and Bohr and their contemporaries did manage to do some revolutionary things; relativity and quantum mechanics were more earth-shattering than anything that has come since in physics.
The usual explanation is that the revolutionary breakthroughs simply haven’t been there to be made — that Feynman and Schwinger and friends missed the glory days when quantum mechanics was being invented, so it was left to them to move the existing paradigm forward, not to come up with something revolutionary and new. Maybe, had these folks been more conversant with their Hume and Kant and Wittgenstein, we would have quantum gravity figured out by now.
Probably not. Philosophical presuppositions certainly play an important role in how scientists work, and it’s possible that a slightly more sophisticated set of presuppositions could give the working physicist a helping hand here and there. But based on thinking about the actual history, I don’t see how such sophistication could really have moved things forward. (And please don’t say, “If only scientists were more philosophically sophisticated, they would see that my point of view has been right all along!”) I tend to think that knowing something about philosophy — or for that matter literature or music or history — will make someone a more interesting person, but not necessarily a better physicist.
This might not be right, though. Maybe, had they been more broad and less technical, some of the great physicists of the last few decades would have made dramatic breakthroughs in a field like quantum information or complexity theory, rather than pushing harder at the narrow concerns of particle physics or condensed matter. Easy to speculate, hard to provide much compelling evidence either way.
Experiment doesn’t validate or refute the argument. It validates (provisionally) or refutes the premises of the argument, assuming the argument is sound. That’s why scientists need to learn how reason rigorously, and elucidate their premises. That said, they’re better off if they learn this from their peers, in the context of studying scientific problems. However, if sloppy reasoning and reliance on implicit premises becomes endemic, then other people—eg, philosophers, mathematicians—certainly have the right to butt in and point it out.
There are other habits (and skills) that ought to be discussed here—the formulation of problems and questions, and the critical analysis of problem formulations.
If one lacked the ability to think before, defending ones work against the bracing critique of scientific peers hones those skills very quickly, or the scientist simply fails.
This ignores the sociological pressures, which a few others above have eluded to, that often cause scientists to unquestioningly accept certain patterns of thought. One’s peers aren’t going to launch critiques that don’t even cross their minds.
There is the extra benefit in science that an argument, no matter how logically sound, fails if experiment cannot validate it
I don’t know what you mean by ‘fails’ but the history of science is replete with examples where theories were known to conflict with experimental evidence but were not rejected. (For examples, see for example Lakatos’ The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes.) Pretty much no one working in the history/philosophy of science accepts naive falsificationism anymore, because it just does not mesh with the history of science — the process of evaluating theories is much, much more complicated than that.
I also note that although Matt Leifer at #10 and Sean himself have admitted the value of philosophers’ work to their own research, many in this thread are still questioning if any philosophical work at all is useful to physics. Should we then conclude that Matt and Sean are not doing physics? Or that they are unable to judge what is useful to them?
[I just missed the comment editing timeout, hence the re-post.]
Experiment doesn’t validate or refute the argument. It validates (provisionally) or refutes the premises of the argument, assuming the argument is sound. That’s why scientists need to learn how reason rigorously, and elucidate their premises. That said, they’re better off if they learn this from their peers, in the context of studying scientific problems. However, if sloppy reasoning and reliance on implicit premises becomes endemic, then other people—eg, philosophers, mathematicians—certainly have the right to butt in and point it out.
There are other habits (and skills) that ought to be discussed here—the formulation of problems and questions, and the critical analysis of problem formulations. In his conversations with Einstein while at the Institute for Advanced Study, Shiing-Shen Chern was struck by how much time and effort Einstein spent in considering problem formulations, which for him was a comparatively minor issue in mathematical work; clear problem formulations were generally available, and one struggled primarily with finding a path to a solution.
(See the Einstein centenary volume edited by Harry Woolf, 1981.)
To be honest, a lot of the discussion about philosophy strikes me as a redirection of “questions you’re not supposed to ask” if you’re a physics student. And you’re not supposed to ask them because your prof won’t be able to answer them.
Yes. There is definitely much more space to ask ‘forbidden questions’ in the philosophy of physics community, than there is in the professional physics community. Many people working in the philosophy of physics now are lapsed physics students who became frustrated with the tunnel vision of much of the physics community, and jumped ship.
This post and the discussion around it brings out very clearly the importance of a diversity of approaches to scientific problems. Let us just look at the facts, without taking sides. It happens to be the case that some physicists find philosophy and history of science important sources of ideas, inspiration and critical thinking. Others do not find them important.
It also happens to have been the case that from the beginnings of physics till the 1940s the leading physicists were those familiar with the philosophical tradition-Einstein, Poincare, Boltzmann, Mach, Bohr, Heisenberg, Pauli, Schroedinger, etc. And before them, Newton, Leibniz, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo…
To answer the challenge in 24 -as to whether any physicist has gotten something valuable from philosophy-just read the introductions to the books by these great physicists. What one sees there is that what these great scientists got from their intimate knowledge of the philosophical tradition was not primarily the sharpening of their thinking: instead they understood the problems they attacked-such as the natures of space, time and motion, the properties of matter, the nature and role of forces, the existence or not of atoms, casuality, etc-as having arise and been defined within the philosophical tradition. And they saw themselves as contributing to the continuation of the history of inquiry into these basic questions.
After world war II there was a switch in style and methodology of physics, and the dominant theorists were people such as Fermi and Feynman who did not find philosophy and history useful. And the proof that it was not useful, is that it was them and not their more philosophically minded colleagues who solved the key problems of their era.
I would conclude from this that at different periods different kinds of styles are needed to succeed in the problems physicists face at the time, and so people who have the required style dominate in any period. To invent relativity and quantum theory, let alone calculus or classical mechanics, a more philosophically informed style was needed, while to develop QED and applications of existing theories such as condensed matter physics and nuclear physics, a less philosophical style is needed.
I think the evidence shows that people who invent theories tend often-but not universally-to find inspiration in the history of thinking about basic questions like space and time, whereas those who develop existing theories do not need that particular kind of inspiration. Feynman didn’t find philosophy useful, but, for all his greatness, was more a developer than an inventor. (He once expressed to me his disappointment at having never actually invented a theory from scratch-apart from his theory of the V-A current, which he said he regarded as a limited success because he missed the gauge bosons.) David Finkelstein, who certainly is an inventor, and, as a byproduct, discovered the meaning of black hole horizons, topological conservation laws in field theory and quantum groups, used to say that he liked to study history and philosophy of science because knowing the history of a question gave him a running start.
The fact is that some of us feel that way, and some of us don’t.
If we can agree about this we can avoid unresolvable arguments for and against the usefulness of philosophy and history of science. Is it too much to ask that those who don’t feel the need for philosophy accept as colleagues deserving of respect those of us who do? At the very least, I hope you have enough respect for the history of our subject to take seriously how the greatest physicists-such as Newton, Boltzmann, Einstein, Bohr, Heisenberg, Schroedinger etc thought about the importance of philosophy. At the same time, those of us who feel the need to situate our work in the light of the philosophical tradition should respect the fact that such great physicists as Fermi and Feynman felt no such necessity-and neither do many of our contemporaries.
The only interesting question is then which style is needed to make progress on the problems that face us now. I have argued that a more philosophical style is needed to solve the great problems of quantum gravity and unification and, while I have detailed reasons for this, I think we can all agree that the proof will be in who makes the breakthroughs that resolve the big problems before us.
Feyerabend, whose quote started this off, is certainly a problematic figure. What he was not, as suggested in 39 above by BeeCee, was a continental philosopher. He was trained in physics and philosophy in Vienna, by descendents of logical positivists, and then got a PhD in London under Popper. Any attempt to parse a quote of his might take into account the fact that he often deliberately played the provocateur. Having discussed with him several times I can report that his detailed knowledge of theoretical physics was way above that of analytic philosophers I had met in graduate school, such as Nelson Goodman and Hilary Putman. The first time I met him, he asked me some technical questions about the interplay of renormalizability and symmetry breaking in the Weinberg-Salam model.
What Feyerabend did do was to puncture claims of Popper and others to explain how science works-how it is that scientific knowledge increases over time. His book, Against Method, and other writings, attacked the claims by Popper and others that the answer was reliance on a particular method. The impression I went away with from our conversations was that he deeply admired the successes of science, but cared that we not rely on false claims about why science was so successful. Feyerabend’s contribution was thus mainly negative-he left us with the problem of how, if there is no consistent scientific method, it is that science does progress. This, if I may say so, was the problem I tried to address in my own recent book, which is why the key Chapter 17 features Feyerabend.
What was certainly true was that he saw himself, with reason, as someone more deeply educated in both science and philosophy than most of our generation, and he found our work consequently lacked depth. And he was no kinder to philosophers than to physicists-as evidenced by the title of an essay he wrote about contemporary philosophy: “From Incompetent Professionalism to Professionalized Incompetence—the Rise of a New Breed of Intellectuals.”
So my hope would be that whether we agree or disagree with Feyerabend-we can all agree that science as a whole is stronger and will progress faster if we can tolerate a diversity of approaches to key questions including the one under discussion here-of the importance of philosophy for physics.
Reiterating my previous point, an understanding of philosophy will not necessarily, directly help every physicist, but it can help some, and honestly, how could it hurt? And all of that aside, it’s pretty interesting stuff. The history of science is undeniably related to philosophical developments, and the history and reasoning behind scientists adopting empiricism over a priori logic and revealed knowledge is quite interesting.
These days, most every scientist accepts and is trained in empiricism, a distinctly philosophical theory of knowledge. Whether or not it is taught directly, or placed into its historical and philosophical context during instruction, this philosophy underpins all of modern science, and it is a shame that so many scientists will disdainfully dismiss, often from ignorance (not directed at any author/commenter personally), an entire field of study that has occupied people for thousands of years and forms the foundation of science. Many would rather sit comfortably in their worldview that empiricism is “obviously” correct, rather than spend the time to understand the historical debates and reasoning of many highly intelligent people that led to empiricism’s adoption into the scientific method. Too many arrogantly assume that they would have thought that way anyway, even if it wasn’t drilled into them in every science class taken in their lifetime, and implicitly assuming themselves to be somehow better than many brilliant people throughout history who struggled with the relations and hierarchy between different kinds of knowledge. But how many of us can justify the scientific method with arguments as to why experimental evidence is better than a priori reasoning or revelation, without resorting to “Well clearly, …”, “Obviously, …”, or the classic move of quoting the achievements of science while downplaying or denigrating real and relevant achievements of other fields of study? Studying some philosophers – Aristotle, Hume, Locke, among many – would help us to be able to form these arguments more convincingly. Whether that leads to better scientific results is not easily answered, but that doesn’t necessarily imply uselessness.
At the very least, being able to discuss philosophy on the level of an informed amateur makes us more well-rounded and more interesting conversationalists. That’s good enough for me.
In some sense, modern physicists are also philosophers, since they always discuss things like interpretation of quantum mechanics, origin of the universe, the nature of time, among other things. In many of these discussions no equations are involved, just arguments. I guess that the forthcoming book by Sean will contain a lot of philosophy inside. When we want to talk about the nature of time, we will necessarily end up doing philosophy, even if the motivation comes from highly technical equations. So, I think that at the end of the day, much of the modern physics discussed today make physicists better philosophers and, as a feedback effect, better physicists.
@Lee Smolin
The tone and content of your comment finds me in complete agreement: to quote you ‘Is it too much to ask that those who don’t feel the need for philosophy accept as colleagues deserving of respect those of us who do?’ I think we should all ask ourselves this question.
@FSN
I was actually thinking about Sean’s book, and now that you mention it I can’t help but ask some questions about that. !) As you said, it is a book about the nature of time, it’s got to have philosophy inside. Now, note this: de we make this assumption by assuming that time is not a material substance reducible to components, i.e. is not a possible object of pure scientific inquiry, but in need of purely logico/metaphysical analysis (hence the philosophy) OR do we make such assumption because, whatever the nature of time might be and whether or not we can give a naturalistic explanation of it, it STILL has repercussions for our own existential experience (hence the philosophy)? 2) (and connected to 1) how far does a physicist go in including philosophical speculations about Time in a physics book about time? And what kind of philosophy? Here the divide between the ‘two philosophies’ is large: if the analytic school, specifically in philosophy of science, has dealt at length with the problem of time, of flow of time, duration, eternity etc (in a characteristic logical way), continental philosophers have been equally fascinated with the topic–including Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Derrida and Levinas–, if in a characteristically ‘existential’ way.
Assuming that we can make this distinction (I am not completely sure we can) between 1) a purely physical/reductionist account of time, 2) a logico/metaphysical account of time and 3) an existential account of time, what motivates the implementation of one approach into a book based onto another one? Is there to gain to fuse the different ones? If you ask me, yes there is. A somewhat paltry example: were Einstein’s intuitions about the observer-relativity of time physical, logical or existential? Or all of them?
My point being: doesn’t this example of a ‘frontier question’ such as the nature of time give us a clear view onto the necessity of a multidisciplinary approach to problems concerning nature? Doesn’t the collaboration of physics and philosophy help in this inquiry? What we seem to forget is that ANY scientific problem was once a ‘frontier question’, and that often some degree of philosophical speculation helped towards a clear picture of that problem.
I think formal–in particural Bayesian–epistemology and confirmation theory could be of use to physicists, or at least of interest to them. Bayesian philosophers often try to give, say, a formal characterization and measure of how E confirms H, and I think they’ve at least made some progress on Hume’s (old) problem of induction. Physicists might also be interested in Goodman’s New Riddle of Induction, which, imho, is way cooler than Hume’s. For those interestest in the latter, check out the section the the Grue paradox:
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/induction-problem/#SomIndPar
From Cunctator:
I don’t want to start an extended debate here, but the implied identification of “material substance reducible to components” with “possible object of pure scientific inquiry” strikes me as clearly untenable. It is especially evident in quantum field theory, not to mention general relativity, that older notions of the “material” have been largely transcended in 20th century physics. Even the alleged reliance on reductionism obscures a much more nuanced reality. Both physicists and engineers are of necessity engaged in synthesis as well as analysis, and the discovery and understanding of novelty that arises in complex “composed” systems, whether as actually constructed artifacts or as theoretical constructs. This novelty may often be cause for dismay, but complexity isn’t obliged to stay within the bounds intended by its supposed designers. (This has been a perennial preoccupation of thoughtful software designers and developers, as well as academic computer scientists.)
In this connection, I strongly recommend that everyone read this wonderful essay by particle physicist Chris Quigg, “Nature’s Greatest Puzzles” (arxiv:hep-ph/0502070).
[PS: Regarding the content of his book, Sean Carroll is certainly an example of a physicist who is both interested and well-informed in the literature and longstanding concerns of philosophy.]
I don’t think anyone should be forbidden the methods that help them, but Feyerabend would apparently argue that a firm grounding in philosophy is essential. This is the most important, and most controversial, point in question. Some people find coffee and cigarettes very helpful, but that doesn’t mean they need such augmentation to function, or even that it’s very good for them overall.
I don’t operate in the rarified world of particle and cosmological theory, so obviously the problems I and my peers routinely encounter are very different. Nor have I personally known an active particle theorist (he left academia for a govt. administrator job), only active solid-staters. At any rate, none of them know any more philosophy than I do, and I’d find it difficult to assert their ignorance has had any discernible impact on their ability to be successful and productive. But then again, all the scientists I know are operating on a firm theoretical foundation, and concern themselves with generating and interpreting experimental data, which is always in ready and ample supply. Not so for the theorist attempting to unify the forces of nature, or elucidate the universe’s origins. Perhaps these days, for that, you really do need philosphy. But like coffee and cigarettes, will the crutch ultimately kill you? That I do wonder about a great deal when I see yet another iteration of this debate.
Chris,
I agree completely, my generalization was only a rather blunt one in order to define a ‘criterion of difference’ between science and philosophy. On the other hand if things in 20th century science became really more nuanced than reductionist classical mechanics (as indeed they are) it is only a reason more to propose a collaboration between science and philosophy.
Thanks for the article, I’ll certainly read it.
I’m a philosopher of science especially interested in physics, and I think this is a very interesting question. Obviously I’d hope that the answer is Yes, but I must say that the evidence is mixed. The most I’d argue for is that it certainly can help in isolated instances. The training philosophers receive in logic, but also certain norms in the field (‘unflinchingly following the argument where it leads’ and such), certainly can clear up confusion and help isolate otherwise hidden assumptions.
The historical fact F refers to seems right. Reading Gerald Holton’s “Do Scientists Need a Philosophy?”, he points out that Einstein, Bohr, Planck, Heisenberg, Minkowski, Boltzmann, and so on had a fairly common philosophical upbringing and later continued interest in reading Plato, Hume, Poincaré, Mach, Duhem, Russell, etc. They also read the philosophical physicists such as Ampere, Helmholtz, Hertz, Eddington, Jeans, and more. By contrast, Holton points out that Sheldon Glashow was asked what he and his cohort read outside of science and he named sci fi, Velikovski, and L. Ron Hubbard!
Of course, back then, the philosophers were more connected to the science: Carnap, Neurath, Frank, Bridgman, Reichenbach (one of his supervisors was Einstein). Yet it’s not clear that knowing or following the precepts of the logical positivists helped science. Cases that seem clearer where philosophy has helped might be (it’s been argued) that Einstein’s reading of Hume and Poincaré opened the door to questioning absolute simultaneity, the influence of Bacon’s philosophy on early modern science, and (M. Friedman argues) philosopher’s discussions of infinitesimals on Newton.
Physicists in Feynman and Glashow’s generations turned away from philosophy, but one thing that hasn’t been said is that philosophy turned away from physics too in Glashow’s formative years. The ‘linguistic turn’ in philosophy would look pretty stale and barren to an outsider (and many insiders); that kind of philosophy would hardly be a likely source of inspiration for physics.
Fortunately, philosophy is now recovering from the linguistic turn and many of us are learning physics and interacting with physicists. Exchanges with physicists on the measurement problem, the problem of time in quantum gravity, the direction of time, and the meaning of gauge freedom, have all recently been very productive. This has resulted in many joint physics-philosophy books, conferences, comments, visiting scholars, and so on. And I think/hope that many of the physicists involved would think these exchanges have been worthwhile. Just don’t read Feyerabend…
To all, and particularly Kevin at 57. above,
One of the points made in Lee Smolin’s excellent book (it makes a great gift, btw, for scientists and non-scientists alike) is that (i) when the history of ideas are taught in physics classes, the “true” thread is highlighted while all the “blind alleys” are ignored and airbrushed out; and (ii) this is regrettable, because day-to-day, working physicists would be able to do a better job if they did have a knowledge of alternative ideas in history. I see the suggestion of Kevin at 57. as kind of a larger-scale version of this idea, that physicists would be well-advised to understand/appreciate empiricism and the scientific method as part of a broader pageant of intellectual history.
Phrased this way it sounds appealing; but honestly I’m not yet convinced. As a analogy, I have reliable access to clean drinking water as a result of the work, some of it brilliant, by many people over several centuries. But while it might be fair for me to offer a silent prayer of thanks to John Snow and Louis Pasteur every time I turn the tap to get a drink, it works just the same if I don’t. Similarly, I can use the philosophical stance of empiricism that I absorbed as a student (just as Kevin says) to accomplish science, even without knowing the intellectual history that led up to it. Would I be a better scientist if I knew more history and philosophy? Maybe so; but one important clue is that the people who trained me, and the people who pay me, to do science didn’t/don’t seem to think so.
Perhaps, as several people have mentioned above, the more interesting question is the reverse: not whether scientists can do better by knowing philosophy, but rather why scientists who are ignorant of philosophy and history can do a reasonable job at all. Ideas?
Paul, let me pick up your analogy to reliance on reliable access* to clean drinking water.
Suppose certain people in positions of influence embarked on an effort—motivated by malice, ideology, incompetence, or cynical self-interest—to dismantle or neglect the infrastructure and regulatory systems that ensure reliable access to clean drinking water, and used every social, political, and economic means at their disposal to undermine even the expectation that we should have it. Wouldn’t the knowledge of how we came to have it in the first place become more relevant? And wouldn’t the complacent acceptance that we have it, without much understanding of what it took to achieve that, prove useful in undermining that expectation?
One thing to keep in mind is that the founders of empiricism were of necessity philosophers, and conscious of the fact, because they were engaged in formulating and promulgating a philosophy, and doing so often in the face of concerted opposition by people who were every bit as smart as they were.
—————————
(* About 16 months ago I spent a few nights in a very nice hotel in a large Asian city. Other members of the group I was with, who had spent much time in that city, advised me to avoid even so much as moistening or rinsing my toothbrush with the hotel’s tap water, and to use bottled water instead. I took their word that I could trust the latter.)
“Only when they must choose between competing theories do scientists behave like philosophers.” ~ Thomas Kuhn.
When we have to choose for example between competing interpretations of quantum mechanics that give the same predictions, it is quite useful to put forward philosophical arguments.
Physics, as well as other aspects of natural science, is thinking about nature.
Philosophy is thinking about thinking.
Physicists need to be able to do enough thinking about their thinking to recognize when their thinking about nature is not working properly. This is particularly important when the foundations on which they build are being shaken, as during the development (and pre-development) of quantum theory, and the house has to be built “from the top down“.
Analogously, a bicyclist on a long trip needs to be able to tell when he has a flat tire, and how to fix it; maybe he needs to know a little bit about how glue responds to temperature. He does not need to know details about the manufacturing of rubber tires.
Feynman, Glashow, et al. have lived and worked during a period that would be described, in Kuhn’s framework, as “normal science”: We have been able to depend on quantum mechanics and relativity the whole time. There have been occasional proposals to turn everything over, but they haven’t really been needed.
By contrast, when quantum theory was being developed, everybody knew that big changes were badly needed, but it wasn’t clear in which direction. Physicists grasped onto what philosophical guidance they could get for hints as to how to proceed. For example, one idea that several of the leading lights seized upon was to “drop concepts that don’t actually appear in the phenomena”, like the concept of a trajectory. This is such a vague idea that it’s hard to see how it could inspire anything, but it got Heisenberg to thinking about the Fourier components of the dynamical variables p and q, instead of thinking about momentum and position directly; and this led him to matrix mechanics.
I think this explains why contemporary physicists have not been that interested in philosophy – excepting those who are specifically interested in understanding QM more deeply, rather than in using it as the basis upon which to explain more phenomena. QM seems to be working fine, so there’s no need to pull out the patch kit.
Philosophy is science. Empirical study and reason are the modes of science that began with the Lovers of Knowledge who were the first philosophers, and thus, the question, “would they be better physicists with philosophy,” is incoherant. They cannot be physicists without being philosophers. It is a necessary condition. It just so happens that the modern academic conception of philosophy tends to deal with the history of thought, or with ethics — like, biomedical morality — and thus draws closer to social sciences in practice due to the emphasis on literature, but the very act of formulating and testing a hypothesis remains a philosophical endeavor by definition. It is a shame, and a sham, that philosophy has been pigeonholed and removed from modern scientific practices which are direct derivations of the first science. And it seems that in this process, scientists have lost their connection to the tradition of rational inquiry which began with philosophy, and have degraded science from an exploration where the journey is the value, to a results based practice, where the ability to think is second to the ability to produce.
Does that mean that you will be a better scientist if you read Descartes? Not directly because the specific quanta contained in the work of a long dead Frenchmen will not likely be relevant to your modern inquiry, but the modes of thought and the inquiry into what can be known, is at the core of all the sciences, and if you think like Descartes did — again, not in the specific but in the general sense — you will be better. It is no surprise that the best philosophers — Descartes work in optics serves this point well — were also darn good scientists.
Nothing disheartens me more to hear someone studying science say something like, “I don’t like philosophy.” It shows that in their studies, they are not learning to think but learning to regurgitate. Certainly they may be able to conduct the experiments which will provide them a career, but because they do not examine the reasons or the core of their pursuit — the motivation, i.e. the unanswerable — many become little more than uncreative automatons. I think that the best scientists — “wait, what if it was a double helix?” 🙂 — are always creative.
In very different types of physics, an example, electromagnetism/engineering and then in contrast, cosmology, both appear to benefit from good thinking, regardless of what subject set they are from, but the first here, is perhaps more hands on, less theoretical. The thinking used in philosophy may apply more to cosmology but the use of applied logic, which is essentially a field of maths – formal logic, more to engineering. Both inductive and deductive thinking, be it whether the use of equations are used or not express these methods, seem to act as a way forward. These methods then, combined with theoretical physics thinking, critical thinking, all the way up to the thinking used in meta physics, seem all to be very beneficial to physics. A few pictures/diagrams wouldn’t go amiss.
Claire
Sorry to be commenting on this a bit late, but this post really interested me – i’m a maths/physics student who’s found philosophy of physics to be consistently interesting and useful – not just in a vague ‘improving your thinking skills way’, but for specific questions in physics.
For example:
– Newtonian mechanics does not always have to be deterministic – this is surprisingly little known, see e.g. Norton’s dome example . Or see Earman’s Primer on Determinism for wider discussion on the compatibility of determinism with general relativity and quantum physics.
– Interpretations of QM. Lots to choose from, but for example dealing with the problem of probabilities in the many-worlds interpretation, or the discussion of the assumptions and results of Bell’s theorem, and whether it only poses a problem for hidden variable theories. Chapter 8 of Huw Price’s book is very good at discussing these two.
OK, these may not exactly be at the practical end of physics, but they still look like proper physics to me.
I have two things to say.
First: was Feynman really anti-philosophy? There’s his famous quote about not asking “but how can it be like that?” But this quote was directed at students, for which it was actually very good advice; he later disregarded his own advice. When I was at Caltech, around 1980, he gave a lecture about how maybe negative probabilities could solve the EPR paradox and get around Bell’s inequality. It obviously didn’t work, since he didn’t publish this result, but I think the fact that he was thinking about it means he wasn’t really anti-philosophy at heart. He may not have said anything positive about the philosophers of physics who were his contemporaries, but I’m not sure I can really fault him in this.
Second: Does philosophy help? Maybe in some circumstances it hurts. Bohr was certainly well grounded in philosophy, and it (logical positivism in particular) seems to have played a role in his development of the Copenhagen Interpretation. When I think about the question of “why wasn’t quantum information theory discovered earlier,” I think some part of the answer has to do with the degradation of the Copenhagen Interpretation into what Mermin labeled the “shut and and calculate” interpretation. Of course, this may be because later generations of physicists didn’t have any background in philosophy (and later generations of philosophers didn’t have any background in physics).
The rate of change of scientific theory has been so fast in the last century that it has perforce left the world of philosophers in ignorant darkness. They hear of the outline of theory but can find deeper understanding too difficult given its complexity and the limited time they can afford to study it.
Both science and philosophy are losing out in this!
Philosophy is still (largely) in a Newtonian world. Traditional logic may be a thing of the past. Quantum logic may be the more general paradigm.
Scientists, for their part, are too busy keeping up with developments to consider the broader aspects of their theories. Clearly there is great need for a middle ground – maybe accademic programs need altering.
Feynman authored what must be one of the most sweeping philosophical syntheses ever seen (this is from one of the latter-day essay collections, and I’m paraphrasing very approximately): “Human history has two fundamental pivots. The first is the invention of writing, which allows you to learn someone else’s ideas without that person being physically present and alive; the second is the invention of science, which allows you to [reliably, systematically, objectively] sort out the valid ideas from the faulty ones.” One can quibble with the details, but it’s certainly a grand vision.
The latter-day Feynman himself keeps the sentiment up from beyond the grave here: http://xkcd.com/397/
This anecdote probably has something to do with Feynman’s attitude towards professional (academic) philosophers and the humanities generally. Also see this Amazon reader review.