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But that's precisely Feynman's point, isn't it? I doubt he idealized the atom, he's just giving a simple example of a model "the object" that is objectively wr
by norswap 10y ago
But that's precisely Feynman's point, isn't it?
I doubt he idealized the atom, he's just giving a simple example of a model "the object" that is objectively wrong but still useful. He's really just saying "all models are wrong, some models are useful".
- colorint 10y agoI don't think that's Feynman's point, no. For one thing, it would be impossible to be a theoretical physicist without having a tremendous amount of buy-in to mathematical realism. That he, for example, believed in things like particle symmetry points to a far-more-than-contingent belief in the reality of mathematical/scientific objects. I think Feynman was just the archetypal "everything is a subset of physics" physicist, who thinks philosophers just play at science. This is obviously not from the linked article, but it's the sense I have of him from his memoirs.