Physicists Are Philosophers, Too

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Cypress

Will work for Scooby snacks

Physicists Are Philosophers, Too​

- In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics -

In September 2010 physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow published a shot heard round the world—and not just the academic world. On the first page of their book, The Grand Design, they wrote: “Philosophy is dead” because “philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

The questions that philosophy is no longer capable of handling (if it ever was) include: How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? According to Hawking and Mlodinow, only scientists—not philosophers—can provide the answers.

The noted physicist and public intellectual Victor Stenger worked with two co-authors to pen an article for Scientific American. In it Stenger and co-authors address the latest eruption of a long-standing historic feud, an argument between physicists and philosophers about the nature of their disciplines and the limits of science. Can instruments and experiments (or pure reason and theoretical models) ever reveal the ultimate nature of reality? Does the modern triumph of physics make philosophy obsolete? What philosophy, if any, could modern theoretical physicists be said to possess? Stenger and his co-authors introduce and address all these profound questions in this thoughtful essay and seek to mend the growing schism between these two great schools of thought. When physicists make claims about the universe, Stenger writes, they are also engaging in a grand philosophical tradition that dates back thousands of years. Inescapably, physicists are philosophers, too.



This article, Stenger’s last, appears in full below.


Physicists Are Philosophers, Too

In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
 
"We test our models to find out if they work; but we can never be sure, even for highly predictive models like quantum electrodynamics, to what degree they correspond to “reality.” To claim they do is metaphysics. If there were an empirical way to determine ultimate reality, it would be physics, not metaphysics; but it seems there isn't."
 
"Thus, those who hold to a platonic view of reality are being disingenuous when they disparage philosophy. They are adopting the doctrine of one of the most influential philosophers of all time. That makes them philosophers, too."
 
"Those who promote the reality of the mathematical objects of their models are dabbling in platonic metaphysics whether they know it or not. Second, those who have not adopted platonism outright still apply epistemological thinking in their pronouncements when they assert that observation is our only source of knowledge."
 
Cypress said:
Physicists Are Philosophers, Too
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Correct. All scientists are philosophers but not all philosophers are scientists. The key distinction is that science is falsifiable philosophy that predicts nature, so it's very specific/focused.

Cypress said:
- In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics -
Click to expand...

Cypress said:
In September 2010 physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow published a shot heard round the world—and not just the academic world. On the first page of their book, The Grand Design, they wrote: “Philosophy is dead” because “philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”
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This is a stupid comment. Hawking might have had a brilliant doctoral thesis but he sure made some bonehead remarks that were not well contemplated, with this being one of them.

One of the weaknesses of unfalsifiable philosophy is that it isn't very useful. Science, however, being falsifiable, is immensely useful, specifically for developing technology. Technology, in turn, is immensely useful for discovery.

... and scientists don't do the discovering. Researchers do the discovering. Scientists make the science based on the discoveries. Engineers build the technology based on science.

Cypress said:
The questions that philosophy is no longer capable of handling (if it ever was) include: How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? According to Hawking and Mlodinow, only scientists—not philosophers—can provide the answers.
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All of this is stupid. Some of these questions ask for somewhat subjective characterizations/descriptions which obviously precludes science. Other questions involve the past tense which obviously precludes science.

Cypress said:
Can instruments and experiments (or pure reason and theoretical models) ever reveal the ultimate nature of reality?
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This has been answered by math. Kurt Goedell proved that it is not a question of "revealing" anything, but of the impossibility of any set of statements to be complete, even an infinite set.

Cypress said:
Does the modern triumph of physics make philosophy obsolete?
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How does physics "triumph"?

Cypress said:
What philosophy, if any, could modern theoretical physicists be said to possess?
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Answer: science

Cypress said:
When physicists make claims about the universe, Stenger writes, they are also engaging in a grand philosophical tradition that dates back thousands of years. Inescapably, physicists are philosophers, too.
Click to expand...
OK. Yep.
 
"All scientists are philosophers but not all philosophers are scientists."

An odd statement I know you will never explain.
 

Hume said:
"We test our models to find out if they work; but we can never be sure, even for highly predictive models like quantum electrodynamics, to what degree they correspond to “reality.” To claim they do is metaphysics. If there were an empirical way to determine ultimate reality, it would be physics, not metaphysics; but it seems there isn't."
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Where are you copying and pasting this text from?

If you want to even be in a position to ask the right questions about the ultimate nature of reality, you need to know physics -- whether or not those questions are currently testable experimentally.

As much as I like philosophy, it takes a distant back seat to science, religion, and literature as the systems that fuel human knowledge.

Albert Einstein, the Dali Lama, Leo Tolstoy are more important to the preservation and advancement of human knowledge than modern philosophy is. Outside of the academic ivory tower hardly anybody is reading Habermas, Derrida, Foucault.
 
Hume said:
"Those who promote the reality of the mathematical objects of their models are dabbling in platonic metaphysics whether they know it or not. Second, those who have not adopted platonism outright still apply epistemological thinking in their pronouncements when they assert that observation is our only source of knowledge."
Click to expand...

Physicists Are Philosophers, Too

In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
 
Cypress said:
As much as I like philosophy, it takes a distant back seat to science, religion, and literature as the systems that fuel human knowledge.
Click to expand...
Leibniz was a philosopher who invented (with Newton) calculus. Is that a trivial contribution?
 
Cypress said:

Physicists Are Philosophers, Too​

- In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics -

In September 2010 physicists Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow published a shot heard round the world—and not just the academic world. On the first page of their book, The Grand Design, they wrote: “Philosophy is dead” because “philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”

The questions that philosophy is no longer capable of handling (if it ever was) include: How does the universe behave? What is the nature of reality? Where did all this come from? Did the universe need a creator? According to Hawking and Mlodinow, only scientists—not philosophers—can provide the answers.

The noted physicist and public intellectual Victor Stenger worked with two co-authors to pen an article for Scientific American. In it Stenger and co-authors address the latest eruption of a long-standing historic feud, an argument between physicists and philosophers about the nature of their disciplines and the limits of science. Can instruments and experiments (or pure reason and theoretical models) ever reveal the ultimate nature of reality? Does the modern triumph of physics make philosophy obsolete? What philosophy, if any, could modern theoretical physicists be said to possess? Stenger and his co-authors introduce and address all these profound questions in this thoughtful essay and seek to mend the growing schism between these two great schools of thought. When physicists make claims about the universe, Stenger writes, they are also engaging in a grand philosophical tradition that dates back thousands of years. Inescapably, physicists are philosophers, too.



This article, Stenger’s last, appears in full below.


Physicists Are Philosophers, Too

In his final essay the late physicist Victor Stenger argues for the validity of philosophy in the context of modern theoretical physics
www.scientificamerican.com www.scientificamerican.com
Click to expand...
The argument of this article is that most physicists are BAD philosophers.
 
Hume said:
Leibniz was a philosopher who invented (with Newton) calculus. Is that a trivial contribution?
Click to expand...
I said almost nobody is reading modern philosophy, except in academia.

Leibniz is not a modern philosopher, he lived in the 17th century.
 
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