4 ms·

But does this kind of pondering lead to any deeper insights, and are this kind of questions proposed by philosophers or by physicists and mathematicians themsel

by chr1 8y ago

But does this kind of pondering lead to any deeper insights, and are this kind of questions proposed by philosophers or by physicists and mathematicians themselves? About this particular question i know Wigner's article, and i saw Feynman, Tegmark, Arkani-Hamed, and lecturers in my univercity talking. But they all were physicists, and all of them seem to be rather sceptical about the philosophy's contribution to such questions (especially Feynman). Was this question noticed by philosophers earlier than it was noticed by physicists? Do you know about any books or talks about philosophy that would help physicists to better appreciate the contribution of philosophy?

naasking 8y ago
> But does this kind of pondering lead to any deeper insights Depends what you mean by "this kind". If you mean nonempirical, nonmathematical exploration, then absolutely. Relativity and Bell's theorem both started as thought experiments concerned with metaphysical properties, which then led to real experiments. > are this kind of questions proposed by philosophers or by physicists and mathematicians themselves? Hard to quantify, mainly because it's not clear how seriously scientists actually take philosophical works, so the sample is biased (and there's evidence they're largely disdainful of it). Philosophers definitely read the works of scientists though, and they provide important analyses of their underlying assumptions. When scientists themselves also engage on this level, we see significant advances in foundations of theories, like many worlds, Bohmian mechanics, quantum information theory, and so on.
- chr1 8y ago
  > and there's evidence they're largely disdainful of it Maybe it's an immune reaction. Scientists need to ask and answer to philosophical questions, to know where to search, but they also need to be ready to easily dismiss their philosophical theories to not spend too much time searching in a region with no solutions. So this necessity of assigning low value to their own philosophical theories, may be causing them to assign low value to the whole field.

by chr1 8y ago

naasking 8y ago

> But does this kind of pondering lead to any deeper insights Depends what you mean by "this kind". If you mean nonempirical, nonmathematical exploration, then absolutely. Relativity and Bell's theorem both started as thought experiments concerned with metaphysical properties, which then led to real experiments. > are this kind of questions proposed by philosophers or by physicists and mathematicians themselves? Hard to quantify, mainly because it's not clear how seriously scientists actually take philosophical works, so the sample is biased (and there's evidence they're largely disdainful of it). Philosophers definitely read the works of scientists though, and they provide important analyses of their underlying assumptions. When scientists themselves also engage on this level, we see significant advances in foundations of theories, like many worlds, Bohmian mechanics, quantum information theory, and so on.

chr1 8y ago
> and there's evidence they're largely disdainful of it Maybe it's an immune reaction. Scientists need to ask and answer to philosophical questions, to know where to search, but they also need to be ready to easily dismiss their philosophical theories to not spend too much time searching in a region with no solutions. So this necessity of assigning low value to their own philosophical theories, may be causing them to assign low value to the whole field.