Has science strayed too far into philosophy?
We see more and more that science, mainly physics, has strayed into the realm of philosophy and though experiments. Seeing this what is your opinion on the subject? Do you believe science has become no longer the study of the world as it is, but as it may be? or do you see science as simply the persuit of knowledge no matter the form?
Comments (103)
There was never a firm partition between science and philosophy. As academic disciplines they only became distinct relatively recently. Natural science used to be called Natural Philosophy (hence Ph.D.), and this nomenclature was a true reflection of the state of scholarship, which knew no boundaries between what we today call "science" and "philosophy."
Nowadays scholarship, like most professional pursuits, is much more specialized. But the reason most scientists don't have to give philosophy much thought, if they don't feel so inclined, is that the theoretical groundwork has already been laid down before them, frameworks have been built, and they can now do productive work within those frameworks, only occasionally doing some maintenance and expansion that does not call for much philosophizing.
But even today's academic boundaries are porous, and at the forefront of theoretical science it is often hard to make a distinction between science and philosophy. And that is how it should be.
Quoting magritte
What do you mean? No doubt, the share of all physicists who are knowledgeable about the philosophy of physics (as an academic field) is quite small. But that is to be expected, and the same can be said about every other field outside of philosophy itself. But surely you must know that there are some physicists who are, at the very least, interested in philosophy, and some are actually knowledgeable enough to participate in the academic process. If you had even a casual interest in the philosophy of science, you would have encountered such examples by now. Certainly on the other side of the fence, philosophers of physics nowadays usually have at least some physics background, all the way to postgraduate degrees.
The original name oh physics was Natural Philosophy, so I would say they are linked.
I propose some tentative suggestions for thinking about the issue
One serious concern is that science makes steady and at times sudden progress. Most philosophy is still keyed on obsolete static categorization or Newtonian physics. How can we track that movement with our theories?
Did Google ban your or something?
I think that many people view science as the supreme expert on truth, forgetting that the models in physics and other sciences are models primarily.
I do believe that the physicist Fritjof Capra is the one scientist who engages most with the issues of philosophy, especially with the boundaries between the sciences and the humanities, in 'The Turning Point'. His book' The Tao of Physics' also makes important links with the philosophy of religion.Also, I think that the ideas of Stephen Hawking are important for philosophy.
Perhaps the artistry of the philosophers can enable science to be seen as important but without relegating all other truths to the rubbish bin.
If your question is indeed sincere and you are not just tossing my challenge to physicists back in my face then I have to assume probably wrongly that you are missing some very basic issues of philosophy that I take wrongly for granted.
The first is that philosophy is a logical enterprise, an application of some pure logic just as mathematics is. Like mathematics or other axiomatic systems, philosophy attempts to stay as simple as possible but not too simple and touches any other ground only as necessary to meet the demands of some arbitrary (strings, tiles, whatever) application domain. There are many possible mathematics and philosophies with the distinction being in their axiomatic choices. Thus, neither mathematics nor philosophy should be thought of or treated as monolithic.
If any of this makes any sense, then that is the rationale for my answer to question 5. above. Theoretical physics is very different from observational physics. They are totally different games by philosophical standards. Knowing the formula for the flight of the bumblebee says nothing about why I was stung when I stuck my hand in there or how I should whack one.
Very important to keep in mind.
So ok, you are clueless. I don't blame you for that: one cannot and doesn't need to know about everything. But if you are interested enough to join the conversation, why can't you make even a tiny effort to learn?
Here, let me google that for you.
Want to see some examples? Here.
To be honest, I don't recognize either philosophy or physics in your description.
I think you are taking the problematic nature of the philosophy of physics too lightly. One can discover a thousand competent books and professional quality articles about physics that can be quoted by title, but the contents are either failed attempts to corral the issues or historical rehearsals of failed attempts to understand what is involved.
I am not sure if there are more than a few serious thinkers who deserve consideration, and they disagree what it is that they should be philosophizing about. Everything else is pulp.
Presumably, metaphysics.
As for myself, I am unaware of physics‘ encroachment on philosophy, and am curious what the originator of this discussion has to offer to inform me on that subject.
That's because physics has thrown up some of the greatest problems of 21st century philosophy, chief amongst them being the ontological status of the wave function, and other implications of quantum mechanics.
It had been thought in the 19th and early 20th centuries that science was closing in on a comprehensive description of the nature of the physical world. On Friday, April 27, 1900, the British physicist Lord Kelvin gave a speech entitled "Nineteenth-Century Clouds over the Dynamical Theory of Heat and Light," which began:
Kelvin went on to explain that the "clouds" were two unexplained phenomena, which he portrayed as the final couple of holes that needed to be filled in before having a complete understanding of the thermodynamic and energy properties of the universe, explained in classical terms of the motion of particles. Specifically, they were the inability to detect the luminous ether, through the failure of the Michelson-Morley experiment, and the black body radiation effect—known as the ultraviolet catastrophe. However, it was the consequences of studying those "two clouds" which lead first to relativity and then to quantum theory - which between them completely shattered the realist picture about which Lord Kelvin was so sanguine.
These discoveries raised huge questions about the fundamental nature of reality - questions which are still not answered to this day, and have lead to ongoing and seemingly unsolvable arguments such as the multiverse conjecture and the many-worlds interpretation of QM.
See The Most Embarrasing Graph in Modern Physics, Sean Carroll.
In so far as this stuff is right, it is physics, and hence trivially not metaphysics. In so far as it is metaphysics, it's at best undecidable and at worst nonsense; hence, wrong.
Well, generally speaking one could say, accurately I might add, every benefit science brings also brings a detriment. Sure, we can live longer. Now we're nearing overpopulation. Sure, we can defend ourselves better. Now the entire world can be engulfed in a nuclear holocaust by a mere accident, misfire, or misunderstanding. Sure, we understand how germs work and can now circumvent many. Now they can be weaponized and wipe out all of humanity. Sure, we can entertain ourselves to our heart's content by mobile devices. Now we walk around all day like zombies, hunched over, necks bent staring at our phones all day neglecting to actually speak to one another. It's hard to say if it was all worth it, all things considered.
Beyond all that however, no scientific law, fact, or understanding came to be without some form of thought experiment. Some person asking themselves "what if...?" - In this respect the two have much in common. Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at the wall and seeing what sticks.
Or better, metaphysics can't say anything, can't tell us anything we could actually make use of. If it did it would be physics.
As it is, all I see here in these discussions are quibbles over pure and groundless reductionisms.
Man is not a mere atom, especially not one hurling through the universe at the speed of light, nor can he be explained by mathematical formulae; to understand him we must recognize the scientific validity of such very real phenomena as fear and shame, trust and hope, love and hate; haven’t we all experienced these and other similar things, quite peculiar to our species? Aren’t these the things we really want to understand? If we discount them as mere figments, or reduce them to the effects of merely physical or behavioral laws, all we are doing is explaining ourselves in the light we wish to understand them...
Years ago I had a discussion with my then wife’s father about his infidelity to his own wife: he was a tenured professor at a well-respected university. He explained to me how research into baboon behavior showed that man was a naturally unfaithful creature...as though we could be no better than the beasts...how well such scientific research fit his own agenda!...
This example, I think, encapsulates all the dangers that a reductionist philosophy of man runs up against, whether influenced by physics, mathematics or animal behavior: man is neither a body in motion, a number in a statistic, nor a baboon cheating on his primary mate.
Agree with your post; this would be as good a starting point as any. Many of the pioneers of quantum mechanics were Europeans and deeply philosophical in outlook - I’m thinking particularly of Bohr, Heisenberg and Schrodinger - and they have some very interesting philosophical views. But when, post war, the focus of theoretical physics shifted across the Atlantic it became much more concerned with practical applications - ‘shut up and calculate’ - and the presumptive physicalism of American secular culture.
Nothing has a pro without a con, we make trades in the hope the good outweighs the bad.
I agree with the statement, man cannot be quantified under one category unless it is a category all to itself.
You want a scientific understanding of fear and shame, but one that is not reductionist...?
Why not a round square while you're at it.
That's a circular argument. You start with completely reducing Aristotelian logical metaphysics to ontology of predicated things, then you claim that metaphysics is empty because it's missing. This is why post hoc metaphysics is nonsense. My argument is that Identity is not the only possible logic for philosophy, and that Identity based philosophy is way too limited to be of any use beyond metaphysics. Physics is a most obvious example, if you really think about it.
Who, me?
Where? I don't recall mentioning Aristotle. Nor claiming that identity was all there is to logic.
And I have a feeling this will end badly.
Sorry, I just dropped the other shoe in answer to the OP. If physicists understood the underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy they would raise exactly this argument. Theoretical mathematical physics is Pythagorean-Platonic, and experimental and observational physics are technology driven and serendipitous, closer to Feyerabend than to anyone else, IMHO.
You are lumping two things together here that may not be the same: There are theoretical physicists (hand waving) and mathematical physicists (mathematicians working in physics).
Indeed it is. Little-commented fact is that Galileo was very much influenced by the Platonic revival that happened in Renaissance Italy, in which Marcello Ficino translated Plato's works into Latin. Galileo's 'the book of nature is written in mathematics' is essentially Platonic. Roger Penrose is very much in the same tradition (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujvS2K06dg4).
The relationship between science and philosophy runs into two major problems.
One, as @magritte put it, science makes it a point to keep things simple and adopting that policy is the shortest path to materialism. It's worth noting that making simplicity a supreme, to-die-for virtue has its beginnings in philosophy (last I checked, it has something to do with nominalism, a philosophical matter) - aka Ockham's razor. Since I'm a paradox aficionado and one presents itself here, mirable dictu, Ockham's razor can be thought of as that philosophical principle that led to materialism and subsequently to science [no attitude can possibly be simpler than that of WYSIWYG] and it's Ockham's razor in the dexterous hands of scientists that effectively shaved off philosophy's relevance to the modern man - there's no point in getting, what is in a sense, sucked into parts of philosophy that reject materialism or tries to get a behind-the-curtains look at materialism itself. The story of philosophy and science is Frankensteinian in character - the good dr. Frankenstein (philosophy) meets his end at the hands of the monster (science) he creates.
Two, switching sides on the issue, science is, at its core, wholly based on inductive logic while philosophy tends to be a deductive-logic enterprise. I recall watching a debate between physicist Lawrence Krauss and Hamza Tzortzis on Islam and the latter sets the tone of the discussion by making this distinction in technique explicit from the get go. I suppose in doing so Hamza Tzortzis' point is that no knowledge derived from induction - just another name for science - could refute deduced knowledge, theology in general and Islam in particular insofar as that debate was concerned. By extension, the same logic should apply to other areas in philosophy that rely on deduction rather than induction as a tool of study.
Quoting tim wood
Yes, that is part of what philosophy of physics is (or more broadly, philosophy, history and sociology of science). And it isn't much different in its scope and methods than a lot of the philosophy that you are probably more familiar with, that has more to do with history, biography and philology than with logic and metaphysics as such. This is probably not what @magritte thinks of as philosophy, but it has long been part of the academic discipline.
But that's not all there is to the philosophy of physics.
Quoting Todd Martin
That's more than a little arrogant, don't you think? Who are you to legislate what "philosophy in its highest sense" should be? Here's a thought: philosophy is what people do when they do "philosophy."
Quoting magritte
The underlying metaphysics of modern philosophy? Really? There is such a thing?
You gotta love this forum.
To be fair, I don't think that these disciplines are very distinct. I don't know any mathematical physicists well, but some theoretical physicists that I've known have gone back and forth throughout their career between working on specific problems in physics and working on less specific mathematical problems, depending on their engagement.
For me this has settled the debate. If someone brings up metaphysics in any rational argument, to me, AND I ONLY SPEAK FOR MYSELF, it signifies that they know absolutely nothing about the subject matter.
That is so because meatphysics is not a coherent, interrelated topic of thought. Its origins were strarted and it got its name from a chapter in one of Aristotle's book, the chapter named "Metaphysics" which literally means "After Physics", and it was named that due to the facs that 1. it came immediately after the chapter in the same book, which chapter was named "Physics" and 2. it contains disparate, to each other unrelated relationships between things.
So to speak of metaphysics as if it were a coherent phylosophical underlining in the Aristotlean sense is nonsense.
To speak of metaphysics in the modern, different sense, means that the author is drawing a connection between the observed, real supernatural and the naturally occurring. The problem with that is that a person is at liberty to believe in metaphysical reality, but he or she should not promote it as a fact or as an accepted consensus, because it is not.
If you drop an apple, nobody will argue you that it will fall down. That's physics.
If you swear up-and-down that your uncle saw ghosts, or that there is a common consciousness, a spirit, an all-encompassing qualia in the world, you are always going to encounter some resistence, as your claim will always be anecdotal and no relevant experiment has ever been performed to support the theories of modern metaphysics.
So as soon as someone says that word in a discussion of hard sciences, that person lost his or her credibility for me, AND I ONLY SPEAK FOR MYSELF. You, whoever you are, are welcome to believe the claims of metaphysical reality.
Just remember: you can have any opinion, but you can't have any fact. There is a saying that says that much better, but I haven't memorized it yet. You can bend opinions but you can't bend facts. Unless you are Pfizer or Bayerische Motor Werke.
Quoting jgill
Even speculative physics of other possible physical worlds is intended to be fully mathematical as soon as the needed maths are invented. Without mathematics what physics is there?
Quoting Wayfarer
Exactly. Unfortunately, Galileo had to be more occupied with the speculative science of motion and change than with philosophy. Proposing a heretical philosophical alternative was clearly not his intention.
Quoting TheMadFool
I imagine that Kant would have agreed with that. But isn't open, inductive scientific knowledge very different in kind from deductive knowledge deduced from closed, purely logical systems?
Quoting SophistiCat
Is it really possible to say anything whatsoever in any language that is not predicated on at least implied metaphysics?
Quoting god must be atheist is an imagined but logically coherent
hypothesized philosophical world for the purpose of generating deductive consequences. The problem with the rejection of metaphysical worlds is that they create the idea and language of structure, objects, relations, facts, events, space, time, and many more, so that nothing can be conceived or communicated without them. BTW, this isn't just true for Aristotle's First Philosophy but for other philosophies as well. So, in saying anything, you have already committed yourself to some metaphysical world, or more likely a number of inconsistent worlds of your own.
I would guess that most of our discussions at TPF are disagreements about metaphysical beliefs.
thanks for clarifying your defintion of "metaphysical reality". I accept it as yours; but please do understand that this is not a definition by consensus; it is instead a definition of your own.
as per your definition. Some would define me as married, by their definition, and the government definition is that I am not married. In the understanding of your defintion, I am committed. But some others include mysticism in their defintion of metaphysical reality; in that sense I am not committed.
True, true. Each to his own. And then we duke it out.
This is interesting. Could you please cite in normal language what inconsistent worlds i contain within that I am committed to? I may not even start an argument, but I do want to see real examples of it. Thanks.
If you are thinking of such things as multiverses in cosmology or the many-worlds interpretation in quantum mechanics, then it's the other way around: mathematics is there from the start, evocative metaphors of "worlds" are interpretations.
Quoting magritte
Identifying metaphysics with just any conceptualization is selling it a little cheap, don't you think?
To speculate what if comes naturally to people. Imagined scenarios just convincing enough to elicit reflection and to enable change of conception or belief by the listeners go back at least to the earliest myths of mankind. Thought experiments need not be rational, just being conceivable is enough. For example, think of Pegasus or Icarus flying in the sky. Or the Wright brothers. Philosophers adopted this and other techniques to convey difficult abstract notions and theoretical and scientists followed suit naturally.
Think experiments create a mental model of what could be, and when you think about it not all that different from seeing it in person if that were actually possible. What science studies is always the form, a scientific generality, and not just this individual. The individual is treated as a representative sample of the form under study.
Quoting god must be atheist
I don't know if you play or watch sports or games. Each one of these has its own logic and language. I'm a prisoners of COVID but I'm allowed to watch movies on the internet, and yes, each movie is its own imagined world. I'm not the romantic hero making love nor the spy who is impervious to the perils of the world, but for a short time I live in their world, their world is somewhat real to me, I speak their language, and use their improbable logic. Does music have any meaning to you? If yes, what is it?
Quoting SophistiCat
Sorry, those are mathematical inventions. But string theories are still incomplete, I believe, for lack of more advanced maths. Newton invented fluxions to formulate his mechanics.
Quoting SophistiCat
Well yes. It is usually cranked up to higher standards. But I'm not the inventor. Nelson Goodman did some brilliant and highly rigorous work along these lines. His work is sadly neglected.
Quoting magritte
You guys . . . :roll:
Wikipedia:
[i]Mathematical vs. theoretical physics
The term "mathematical physics" is sometimes used to denote research aimed at studying and solving problems in physics or thought experiments within a mathematically rigorous framework. In this sense, mathematical physics covers a very broad academic realm distinguished only by the blending of some mathematical aspect and physics theoretical aspect. Although related to theoretical physics,[3] mathematical physics in this sense emphasizes the mathematical rigour of the similar type as found in mathematics.
On the other hand, theoretical physics emphasizes the links to observations and experimental physics, which often requires theoretical physicists (and mathematical physicists in the more general sense) to use heuristic, intuitive, and approximate arguments.[4] Such arguments are not considered rigorous by mathematicians, but that is changing over time[citation needed] .
Such mathematical physicists primarily expand and elucidate physical theories. Because of the required level of mathematical rigour, these researchers often deal with questions that theoretical physicists have considered to be already solved. However, they can sometimes show that the previous solution was incomplete, incorrect, or simply too naïve. Issues about attempts to infer the second law of thermodynamics from statistical mechanics are examples. Other examples concern the subtleties involved with synchronisation procedures in special and general relativity (Sagnac effect and Einstein synchronisation).
The effort to put physical theories on a mathematically rigorous footing not only developed physics but also has influenced developments of some mathematical areas. For example, the development of quantum mechanics and some aspects of functional analysis parallel each other in many ways. The mathematical study of quantum mechanics, quantum field theory, and quantum statistical mechanics has motivated results in operator algebras. The attempt to construct a rigorous mathematical formulation of quantum field theory has also brought about some progress in fields such as representation theory.[/i]
You overlooked my "may not be the same"
There's no shortage of confidence on TPF. Amusing at time. :smile:
Do you mean experimental physicists or perhaps engineers?
We already established that your defintiion of metaphysics is individual, and its name stands for anything imaginary, conceptual, or fictional.
Those imitry which you describe and call worlds are not worlds. There is an insinuation in our minds that they are different worlds, but they are not. And they are definitely not incompatible with each other.
Next you will define what a world is (a real thing or a phantasm), and pretty soon, if we keep pushing you, you'll declare that every word in the English langauge will mean each other and every other as well as their own meanings.
So this is it. You wash out the boundaries between distinct concepts, and you are convinced that that's an accepted, and acceptable practice.
Should you be right, we'd still be sitting in trees, wondering if rocks are edible.
I just came out of a conversation with Metaphysical Undercover. I think it was him, but I mix up usernames in my head, so if it wasn't him, many apologies to him. But the idea is more important than who it was. He defined metaphysics in his own individual way, too.
I think the two of you will get together and duke it out.
It is surprising, and a huge coincidence, that two users on this site have come up at the same time, well, on the same day, with ideas that are dissimilar, but their root is the same, and the logic in both instances involves 1. changing the language and 2. taking possession of the word "metaphysics."
I don't mean anything. This is a Wikipedia article. Argue with them. :cool:
Since I piddle around with dynamics in the complex plane - force (vector) fields that predict the movements of particles, I suppose I am somewhat a "mathematical physicist". Like you, magritte, I will await my Nobel Prize in the mail! :victory:
My knowledge of mathematics and physics is rather outdated: I studied them 40 yrs or so ago in high school and university, and much more progress may have been achieved in these fields since then; but I have never heard that we have, starting with only the postulates of these two sciences either separately or combined, been able to predict, as Maxwell did electro-magnetic waves, the periodic table, which, to my mind, suggests that there is a distinction to be made b/w the disciplines of mathematics, physics and chemistry, and that the phenomena of the “higher” science, that of chemistry, cannot be understood simply or solely by the postulates of it’s two lower sisters.
Similarly, I have never heard (correct me if I’m wrong!) that chemists, working from the postulates of their peculiar science, have ever been able to predict that that new thing in nature, based on the carbon atom, called “life”, must emerge, much less that it would take on the infinite variety of form that it has, nor substitute for the science we call biology, with its own postulates that describe its own peculiar phenomena...
Finally, I see that this new object of science, man, emerges as something distinct and superior to the the things that merely live, the objects of biology, with his own peculiar characteristics irreducible to those of that inferior science, and I am convinced that nature is arranged in a hierarchy, from things lower to higher, each governed by its own peculiar laws...
...and, having studied, in a rudimentary fashion, the systems of gov he has established and how each sort influences general thought, have concluded that those who condemn me for being “arrogant” in thinking this way are simply blinded by democratic ideology, which asserts that, to put it bluntly, “nothing is better than anything else”.
I once had a discussion with a man who I finally forced to confess that he believed a human being was not, essentially, any better than a rock; so I asked him, “so you don’t mind if I kick you around in the argument a little?”,...and he was offended!
Yes. The Europeans may have been less committed to the doctrine of Materialism, and more familiar with philosophical Metaphysics. Around the beginning of the 20th century, the United States was changing the focus of higher education, from Philosophy (wisdom) -- as in Phd -- to Pragmatism (practical applications). Apparently, some of the pioneers of Quantum Theory retained some of their philosophical training, even as they discovered that the foundations of the material world are not composed of Physical Matter, in the traditional sense, but something more like Metaphysical Mathematics. Hence, fair game for philosophers. :smile:
Is quantum mechanics materialist?
Consequently, Einstein's relativity was considered a denial of materialism and objective reality by philosophers and some prominent scientists at the time.
http://socialismtoday.org/archive/127/quantum.html
Quantum: Einstein, Bohr and the great debate about the nature of reality :
In 1958, Heisenberg wrote that the Copenhagen interpretation had "led physicists far away from the simplistic materialist views that prevailed in the natural sciences of the 19th century". Einstein, he said, wished to return to "the idea of an objective, real world", where subatomic particles "exist objectively in the same sense as stones or trees exist, independently of whether or not we observe them". (Physics and Philosophy, pp82-83)
Nominal Mass : in physics, Mass is the metaphysical "essence" of Matter. Mass has no physical properties, it is itself a property -- a Quality. It's the name (L. nomen) for a measure of Matter. (L. mensura ; mens -- mind)
Note : you won't find this definition in Physics textbooks.
Nope, that would be fun but the metaphysics isn't all mine.
I'm talking about a much more generalized version of Aristotle's systematic metaphysics which I did not invent. It's been around since antiquity but you really have to look to find it.
Aristotle starts with a strict logical principle, non-contradiction (think of as Socratic elenchus). This is also the logical equivalent of the principle of identity, just meaning closed, bounded objects. Then, he axiomatically specifies the same for both objects and propositions. Thus he creates a logical, metaphysical world, or imaginary formal reality, if that sounds any better. From that he develops a simple and powerful and very general philosophy from which his standard (not mine) ontology, epistemology, and ethics roughly follow. That's the 5-second guide to philosophy in a nutshell.
The historical development is straight-forward. Parmenides comes up first with this logic for his One object, Aristotle extends that to many objects. According to my probably wrong reading, Nelson Goodman and others extend this to a plurality of metaphysical worlds, a foam of Aristotelian philosophical worlds, which Goodman applies to the reality of all actual phenomena, especially in the arts.
Naturally, since I am here, I will extend this just one more simple step to non-Aristotelian worlds as well. In this case, the logic is not specified up front by Parmenides, rather each application sets its own axiomatic logic.
Where this comes into this thread is the philosophy of science where each sub-discipline has its own logic. Not just physics, but each science and its specialties.
Quoting jgill
:up: You're talking to a woke fan. I check the flow of high and low global winds and pollution each morning.
Well, I’m under the impression that science, mainly physics, has always been in the realm of philosophy, at least as a way to test hypotheses and thereby attempt to find a more agreeable or universally verifiable answer to the questions posed. Any claim about the world as it is draws from a study of the world as it may be, and this is more apparent as physics provides probabilistic answers that are open to interpretation, more often than objective certainty. This is not a failure on the part of physicists, rather an understanding of the relativity of ‘the world as it is’, and even of the world as it may be, for that matter.
There are those who are satisfied with the pursuit of data or logical information, with no regard for the relational structure or form in which it may describe the world. Others are happy to construct logical forms without any intention of broadly testing hypotheses against the world as it is - content that it formulates a logical structure of the world as it should be. To the extent that the world as it is diverges from this logical form, they are condemned to suffer fools, to ignore, isolate and exclude information about the world as it is, or to reformulate their conception of the world as it may be.
In my opinion science, mainly physics, can no longer pretend to isolate itself from the realm of philosophy and the questions it poses or answers it offers, just as philosophy cannot afford to be ignorant of scientific research in relation to answering the questions posed.
As far as I can tell, Hamza Tzortzis in his debate with Lawrence Krauss brings to the fore science's most embarrassing character flaw in a manner of speaking viz. that it's inductive logic through and through, extrapolating from particulars to generalizations if I recall correctly.
It's not the case that scientists aren't aware of this fact though; they constantly remind themselves and the public that scientific theories are not written in stone - fixed, unchangeable - but, au contraire, can be, should be, modified/thrown out the window, as new evidence comes to light.
Science, the bottom line is, deals with tentative truths - truths that can be false.
Philosophy, although employing the odd inductive argument here and there, is a field whose mainstay is deductive logic and deductive logic is all about absolute truths - truths that can't be false.
What all this means is that if science and philosophy should ever find themselves in opposing camps on an issue, it would be a clash of tentative truths vs absolute truths and by the very meanings of these two kinds of truths we can get an idea of how things will pan out.
This open question reminds me of Quantum Theory. It began as a reductive search for the philosophical Atom. But, at this moment, it ends with ellipsis . . . . . . .
That omission of knowledge opens the door for Philosophy to help explain the relation of Human Nature -- Life & Mind & fear & shame -- to physical Nature. Philosophy (and scientific hypotheses) fills-in the blanks (gaps in understanding) with logical speculation. That may be why science has -- inadvertently, but necessarily -- "strayed" into the the purview of Philosophy. :smile:
Quantum paradox points to shaky foundations of reality : https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/08/quantum-paradox-points-shaky-foundations-reality
Philosophical Atomism : is a reductive argument, proposing not only that everything is composed of atoms and void, but that nothing they compose really exists: the only things that really exist are atoms ricocheting off each other mechanistically in an otherwise empty void.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism
...I am compelled to agree with a certain late professor of political philosophy who proclaimed that, “we may be witnessing the end (of philosophy)”.
What was it Feynman said about it? That it was kind of dippy. One should not have to regularize or renormalize in such bizarre ways to get predictive results. Once the true mathematical structure is found, then it may be the only way to "understand" quantum science.
One can't usefully make general statements about the state of philosophy, but it is not like the progress of science is universally ignored - certainly not by those who specialize in modern science, but more besides. Obviously, Darwinism and Einstein's relativity have had a pronounced effect on philosophy (for better or for worse).
Speaking of QM, I recently came across this entertaining survey from F.A. Muller: The Influence of Quantum Physics on Philosophy. He concludes thus:
I like that.
You might use the "@" button when naming someone; then they will receive a notification.
I am not guilty of the reductionism that you describe.
Was it Kant earlier that went a bit astray when referring to Euclidian geometry and not knowing that later non-Euclidian geometry would be a hot topic in math? Philosophers can relate to science, but basing philosophy on science can be a tricky thing as our scientific understanding can change a lot. Still, why the connection?
The reason is very naive and simple:
People tend simply to think that physics, Quantum Mechanics, cosmology etc. are somehow close to the basic philosophical questions, hence we let physicists blabber about philosophical question, things that they actually have not studied or worked on. It's actually not their fault: it's the media who asks them. And they (the physicists) can see that people are interested in books about the great questions written by them, if they have been picked up by the media and are known to the public. No philosopher will have similar popularity describing his actual field of inquiry. Hence the result of these physicists pondering philosophical questions is typically quite poor: they give answers that actually some age of enlightenment philosopher basically said ages ago better with only being mixed with the field of study that the physics works on.
I think it all shows that philosophers are a bit lost and the post-modern bullshit won't help.
Well, what would we base it on then? We obviously cannot assume that the current state of science is the last word and the whole truth about nature. But ignoring science would be an even bigger blunder. We just have to live with the fact that philosophy is no less contingent than science.
Quoting ssu
There is a reason why so-called fundamental physics is often thought to have an intimate connection with basic metaphysical questions (cf. physicalism, metaphysical and ontological grounding...) For example, while it is not a given that the ontology of fundamental physics has some sort of metaphysical priority, it is a popular enough notion.
But more to the point of your complaint, as I pointed out above, science cannot be too far removed from philosophical questions. When scientists attempt to make sense of nature and come up with theories about it, they are not doing anything different in principle than what philosophers do when they turn to the same subjects. It is only relatively recently that academic and technological specialization bracketed off certain methods of study and called them "science."
Still, if we view science as a branch or outgrowth of philosophy, then professional scientists, as a rule, have a much more narrow specialization than professional philosophers. This is why we find that scientifically literate philosophers are usually in a superior position when they philosophize about nature outside of the narrow scientific context, while, as a rule, professional scientists appear to be dilettantes in these matters. But that is when science is in a quasi-stable state, when no major paradigmatic changes are under way and well-informed philosophers can stay up-to-date with the state of science. Conversely, when you look at the history of thought, most important new developments in the thinking about nature were driven by developments in science.
For starters, remembering just what you said there: the current state of science isn't the last word or the truth about nature. Hence don't make your philosophy totally dependent of the current science of the present.
Hence if you are making a philosophical argument, far better to base it on previous philosophical inquiry on the question at hand. If the advances in science make that past views antiquated, that is then a different thing. But usually it isn't so: much that the philosopher of the Enlightenment said is current even today, even if the natural sciences of that time have evolved.
Quoting SophistiCat
I would ask why would it be so. Because philosophy has debated already for long the problems of physicalism and materialism. And the pseudo-scientific world view was about a "Clock-work universe" and then this changed to "Multiverse" with Butterfly-effects, it really isn't pure philosophy. For me it's the questions we ask that define our answers, not an interesting scientific theory that gets people to mold their world-views to fit that theory.
Quoting SophistiCat
Well, if philosophy means love of wisdom, the link to science should be obvious. Just as PhD is is short for Doctor of Philosophy. Yet the problem is that when philosophers have a broader view, that makes it far more difficult to understand things you are handling.
Quoting SophistiCat
Yet Is philosophy just thinking about nature? Natural sciences answer more directly to what nature is, yet any question of "what should be" and you need philosophy.
That's a terrible idea. I just can't think of a single advantage in rejecting the fruits of the most productive period in the history of scientific thought and empirical research in favor of recycling past ideas. Ideas, which themselves were, of course, to a great extent informed by observations and scientific ideas of their time and times past.
Quoting ssu
I say good riddance to "pure philosophy" (if there ever was such a thing, which of course there wasn't - see above). Of course, my idea of a scientifically literate philosopher is not one whose ideas about science come from popular media publications and, God help us, Butterfly Effect. Fortunately, in actuality there is no lack of philosophers who are better informed about their subject matter (see, for example, some names from the three generations of philosophers of physics in the paper that I linked above, which include actual physics PhDs).
Quoting ssu
No argument here - except, of course, where philosophers choose the naturalizing approach.
Well, you seem not to hold philosophy in high regard compared to natural sciences. But just like "pure math" isn't at all dismissed by natural science, I think especially analytical philosophy and formal logic has it's place also.
And I'm surely not dismissing science or taking the view that science wouldn't matter. What I just oppose is the simple reductionism of the view that If physics at the nuclear level uses QM, the QM should be used as an overall philosophy, because... at the nuclear level physics uses QM. Hope you get my point.
I am not denigrating philosophy. But since we have this specialization and division of labor, philosophers should be using scientific results and ideas where it is appropriate - for example, when discussing the metaphysics of space and time (e.g. The Ontology of Spacetime ed. D. Dieks.)
Quoting ssu
Well, that is one view, but it is not the only view, and it is not just taken for granted because science.
When it is appropriate. That's all I want to say.
Without logic science is just data!
in Quantum physics energy equals matter, quantum entanglement and uncertainty theory rule.
However, the inverse needs to be respected as well. When scientists are discussing the metaphysics of space and time, they ought to have respect for established ontological principles.
I didn't read the book referred, but judging from the table of contents, it looks like it completely ignores the principal ontological feature of time, and that is the important difference between future and past. When we respect the empirical fact that the past consists of events which have actually already occurred, and the future consists of the possibility for events, it becomes evident that we need a conception of space which is radically different from anything employed by physicists.
Thank you for bringing clarity into this headache of a debate ! I feel like the topic became : “should metaphysics be a part of physics ?” but I’ll go back to the main question.
From my experience with scientists and philosophers : Science has strayed close into philosophy, yet so far… Some physicists do make a lot of assumptions that are purely metaphysical. Some biologists talk about ethics and politics as if they were part of science. And some philosophers talk about philosophy as if it were science. But then they’re people, not the discipline itself.
When it comes to publishing papers, I have the feeling that the boundaries are much clearer. Each discipline has its own rules, so in that sense, they are easy to distinguish from each other. However, to me, science could use a bit more of philosophy of science (as in the study of its method), to set the boundaries straight, even in texts that are not papers. People would thus know exactly what kind of knowledge they can get out of science, and wouldn’t confuse it with another discipline anymore.
Science could also use a bit more focus on a global understanding, instead of leaving it to the realm of philosophy. It feels so frustrating to me, all the knowledge is there, but we don’t use it for that purpose. We only focus on getting more knowledge from experiments, instead of trying to put together, in a rational way, the knowledge that we already have. And I’m not talking about theoretical sciences, but about thinking of the best way to explain the world with the current scientific knowledge, trying to come out with the explanation that takes the most theories as possible into account, while staying within the limits of science. For example, scientists could try to explain very global concepts such as life, intelligence, welfare, and expose the limits of science in understanding (or measuring, defining) these concepts. But that was never part of a discipline. Some scientists do have opinions on these concepts but they’re not knowledge, it stays at a personal level. And when philosophers try to think on scientific knowledge, well, they often lack the scientific background to do it right.
Does anyone think it would be a good idea to create such a discipline ? Or does anyone know such a thing ?
(And it would exclude metaphysics as it would be based on experiments only).
:rofl:
I am not sure I understand what you have in mind. Can you elaborate a little further, give a more specific example?
What I mean is that science sometimes goes off limits and gives fast conclusions like "we can measure welfare, time dilatation,..., without investigating further the meaning of these words. And if you don't do that, how can you know exactly what you're talking about ? It ends up being in the field of philosophy, because it can be subject to much more interpretations that science can deal with.
But if they would define it clearly, it could stay within the limits of science. They could say something like “if we define welfare this way, it involves these scientific concepts that can be measured through these other notions”, and then you clearly see all the uncertainties on the language itself, because what science is actually “sure” about is these notions that can be directly related to observations/measurements.
And it would be hard for philosophers to do that, because they don't know as much as scientists on these scientific concepts and measurements. And it is hard for scientists to do that because they're only used to defining notions that are quite directly related to experiments.
Do you know what I mean ?
This seems to be the opposite of consensus, and my experience, which is generally that science is rather concise in its language and demands specialist knowledge of its readership.
Can you please point out what part of my text is the opposite of consensus ?
:up:
Absolute and Relational Theories of Space and Motion : Since antiquity, natural philosophers have struggled to comprehend the nature of three tightly interconnected concepts: space, time, and motion.
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/spacetime-theories/
Note : maybe physicists are not any smarter than ancient Greek philosophers. :joke:
Right, I guess I shoud have been more specific : what in the quote is the opposite of consensus ?
Do you think what I said is wrong, like scientists don't say things like "we can measure welfare" ?
Or do you think that defining such concepts in a scientific way wouldn't lead to consensus ?
Not really, you just restated what you already wrote earlier. Assuming you are speaking from experience, can you give a specific example where scientists fail to give an adequate definition and how that hurts their efforts?
Quoting Avema
Well, yes, that's the point. Science is an empirical discipline, so it needs operational definitions.
Your post suggests that science is rather loosey-goosey in its use of language and its concepts, that it doesn't really know what it's talking about compared with philosophy. The truth is precisely the reverse. There is no room for ambiguity or misunderstanding in scientific publications because you have to place your work in an extremely large and rigid context. You cannot, for the sake of argument, define time dilation as something subtly different to how the community understand it (unless an existing shortcoming in that definition is the point of the paper): you manuscript would never get published if you tried.
Ultimately any scientific paper has to be written in such a way that someone else in your field can go away and reproduce your results. This places extremely tight limits on the language and concepts you employ. So when a scientific paper discusses time dilation, this is understood exactly by people who understand the language of science. That language -- mathematics -- is itself extremely concise, which is one of the barriers to understanding that lay people complain about: to understand the exact meaning of a paper's point on, say, time dilation, you need to understand e.g. tensor calculus.
Yes, and I was never talking about papers, which is why I said, in my first post :
Quoting Avema
All I want to say is that scientists are so rigorous and rational when it comes to concepts that are close to experiments, but when it's about a more global concept (that is often studied in philosophy), they often lose all the rationality and don't define concepts anymore, and of course, these are never published as scientific papers. If we have a part of science that focuses on that, it won't have the same rules as for publishing papers but I don’t see why it couldn't be a part of science.
Philosophy has always provided this benefit to science: natural philosophy, empiricism, Popper, Latour, ontology, phenomenology, ethics, and countless more. And the entirety of mathematics. It always puzzles me that some philosophers and philosophy students think that science closes it's ears to philosophy; I suspect this is because philosophy is more forgiving of whack ideas and those accusing science of antipathy toward philosophy hold some of those whack ideas :D
There a whole bunch of scientists who have a dim view of philosophy which I suppose they regard as nothing more than wool-gathering. I can't name them but if you survey the scientific landscape as it were you will come across a few science bigwigs who don' take too kindly to philosophers. That's not to say they're right of course.
I'm probably talking out of my hat when I say this but it's probable that some, not all, scientists aren't aware that science is just one branch of philosophy - empiricism - taken to its natural conclusion and even if they are in the know about it, their grasp is likely to be superficial and unlikely to include the intricacies and subtleties that lie at the heart of objections to empiricism. Thanks :smile:
After almost ten years in a physics department, I haven't come across it. The nearest I can muster are: 1) the phrase "it's just philosophy, not science" which I don't think is meant to belittle philosophy so much as reflect the fact that some things do not meet the criteria of scientific theory (which doesn't stop scientists thinking about them ALL THE TIME (viz: the long-running discussion on the interpretation of QM); 2) if you do philosophy, you're not kidding yourself that it's a great career move, whereas if you're doing physics you probably either want to be an experimental physicist, a theorist, an astronomer or work in industry in some physics-related way, so those are the usual routes taken. I guess to that extent, studying philosophy is seen as more luxurious, more hobbyist, and less vocational, so there might be some resentment at feeling obliged to do something more vocational. I imagine that's even worse in the UK now after the tuition fee hike. But it's not a judgment on the philosophy itself.
Quoting TheMadFool
That's true. I was originally answering the point that science itself is deaf to philosophy, but science can absorb philosophy and pass it on as methodology, without science students necessarily being taught the reasons behind it. You do learn all this stuff if you do Physics with Philosophy for sure. And I guess that's the problem. I won't speak about chemistry and biology, but physics students have to specialise. You can do experimental physics (what I did, to my regret), computational or theoretical physics, physics with mathematics which does the equivalent of what you suggest for the mathematics underlying physics, physics with astronomy, physics with industry, or physics with philosophy. It would be nice to do more, and one can elect to do so depending on how structured your course is, but you can't do everything and, because as I said above, science timetables are very full, there's not much room for extra-curricular reading except for the least social of us. :)
I was thirty years in a math department, and I cannot recall any sort of serious discussion condemning philosophers for meddling in our subject. Occasionally someone might bring up intuitionism or Platonic ideals, but no one paid any attention to academic philosophers dissecting mathematics.
Quoting CallMeDirac
Straying a little from this OP, and given we do have philosophy of science (Kuhn, etc.), there has been a slow chipping away of the subjects of philosophy by science, though I don't begrudge science taking its place, nor believe that philosophy does not benefit from the lessons of science and that philosohy must be accountable to scientific advances.
However, the feeling of satisfaction with the method of science to provide certainty, predictability, universality, necessity, etc. has lead to an expectation that everything should meet that standard. Beginning with the Renaissance with Descartes and Kant dividing us from the "world", we've tried to sew that seeming distance back together with true knowledge, even logically necessary rationality. It reached a peak with the positivism of Comte, Carnap, Popper, and recently, even Stephen Hawking--the idea that only true/false empirically or logically-verifiable statements offer real knowledge of the world (the descriptive fallacy). This leads this scientific outlook (or its corrupted philosophical cousins) the feeling it can (and has more authority to) speak to the original and remaining purview of philosophy--aesthetics, morality, how to lead a better life, the investigation of our unreflected concepts, etc.
Even after Nietzsche, Emerson, Wittgenstein, Austin, Cavell, we still believe that science is the standard, and knowledge/theory the solution for the answer we demand. Despite its inability to teach us what we want to know about our moral realm, the problem of the Other, our skeptical doubt, etc., we still desire an answer of its certain form, thus its criteria for a valid solution are set in our cultural unconscious before even beginning to look. We want DNA and have forgotten how to (or fear to) assess the credibility of a witness and convict on circumstantial evidence. We follow the same desire to remove our responsibility in the face of the limitations of knowledge and the need for judgment, or assertion of ourselves, our acceptance of the other. This is science's belief its success allows its knowledge and standard to address our problems, "no matter the form".
As already mentioned by others here, science was not distinguished from philosophy until the mid 19th century. Prior to that it was all more or less "moral philosophy" or "natural philosophy", more or less the humanities and science as we know them today. As for physics and philosophy, well some physicist like Sean Carroll or David Albert certainly are well informed philosophically, others like Lawrence Krauss or Neil deGrasse Tyson aren't, and usually say dumb things about philosophy.
The thing is, what we now call philosophy focuses on issues in which almost nothing is known, which is why we can talk about consciousness, language, ethics, perception, etc. The other topics in modern day philosophy haven't changed much either. So we can talk about the nature of self, free will, the ideal state, the nature of ideas, the problem of knowledge and so on. Either way, philosophy is trying to make some sense of mysteries. Physics has been lucky enough to advance to a significant degree in comparison with other sciences, that they have more than enough to deal with without having to worry about other disciplines. Yet, despite the amazing advances in physics, we still don't know what 95% of the universe is made of, even if we have a name for them in "dark energy" and "dark matter."
Another issue altogether is to ask if any science benefits from thinking philosophically about any particular issue, for example, will a neuroscientist benefit from thinking about the "mind-body problem", or would a biologist have use for, say, Schopenhauer's idea of the "will" and so on. Some might, many won't. There's just too much stuff, too much information, to uncover.
What magritte describes just under the OP is a symptom of what CallMeDirac is getting at.
Here is the problem as I see it.
Science is fine. Physics is great. Experimental Physics is ultimately like a Philosophers toolkit. Theoretical physics can be thought of as a Philosophers brainstorm kit.
The problem is politics and technology.
Let's look at just one majorly volatile issue. Climate Change
Regardless of your take on climate change, there is no doubt that politics and technology has spilled into and corrupted the argument.
1 thing you will probably never hear from a fossil fuels zealot: "It's better to harness energy from a renewable source."
1 thing you will probably never hear from a green new deal type: "Humans exhale CO?. Trees breathe in CO?"
Both know that the statements are true but both are so polluted by gas lighting from their own side that they allow political posturing to color their argument.
This gas lighting distracts also from the really important issue with climate change. How?
How do we move to a sustainable way of living without first laying everyone off? Or a zero carbon future where we immediately question your breathing output or the output of a cows flatulence. We can just shut off everything, but I would argue that its highly politically charged to suggest there should be no attempt to transition to alternatives before you do that and the fighting begins ..
On Mars right now there is an instrument called Moxie which will attempt to convert Mars' CO? to O?.
i.e. to essentially mimic what a tree on earth can do, but due to the political gas lighting we don't talk much about solutions. The aim of gas lighting is not to come up with solutions, but to force agendas. To dumb down the argument away from finding mutually acceptable solutions or paths to change and to instead lower ourselves to gutter fights about why all these fossil plants need to be shut down. It's aggressive and that is the intent.
Technology is the other problem. We can agree Technology ? Science.
Technology itself is a broad sweeping term but many of us place trust in it as being based in science. Very often it is the bastardization of the application of science.
It entails modern administration of discourse, communication, emotion conveyance, censorship, practically everything. Too many place too much faith in anything once it simply becomes the digitization of the same old thing we had before.
The argument could be made that the CEO of a tech company is essentially a modern unelected political tsar, but for those low on self esteem, they can be looked up to seen as someone who is wise in science. So its a very dangerous and false deduction to make.
For me, physics is an essential tool we should leverage to learn more about the nature of our universe and as often happens, it sparks us to ask even more meaningful, deeper questions the more we get answers. So you could see it as a catalyst for philosophy.
Politics, business, and technology are entirely different things and come loaded with a lot more subjective baggage.
Quoting magritte
regarding what magritte said, I would put that in the category of politics in science. It's most probably in the realm of what we call the military industrial complex.
Let's assume I want to develop a weapon. But I don't want my enemies to know exactly what it is I'm developing. I have a physicist doing research on A, and any number of physicists doing work on B - Z. I have an engineer above them all managing and influencing their research objectives though DARPA grants etc. I can see the big picture on what I'm building but my enemies cannot. Unfortunately, this compartmentalization of work nowadays comes at the cost whereby physicists are unaware and deliberately kept in the dark about the useful and enlightening aspects of their work are, in favor of maintaining secrecy about certain applications of the whole of these parts to be implemented later on.