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“New Theory of the Universe,” a headline in the London Times crowed. “Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.” For a introductory but fascinating treatment of why this is w

by Jun8 7y ago

“New Theory of the Universe,” a headline in the London Times crowed. “Newtonian Ideas Overthrown.” For a introductory but fascinating treatment of why this is wrong you should read Asimov's The Relativity of Wrong (https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm https://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.ht...) In fact, this should be required reading for science journalists, which, by the looks of the current writing, is not the case. Sad to read that the Nobel committee was so influenced by Henri Bergson's baseless objections. As a layman in both physics and philosophy here's my take: Philosophers play a crucial function in all science but especially in physics, which purpots to explain reality in bizarre terms. It's when they go beyond interpreting and assisting to actually predicting is when things go wrong. For a well-known example of this consider Hegel's "proof" in his dissertation that there cannot be more than seven planets, based on idealistic analysis of gaps between planets (to be fair, in his later work he has said he no longer holds many views expressed in the dissertation). For a discussion on why Hegel thought so see: http://hegel.net/werkstatt/english/hegel_and_the_planets.htm http://hegel.net/werkstatt/english/hegel_and_the_planets.htm. For a more in-depth discussion see this article: https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2251262.pdf?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdf/2251262.pdf?seq=1#page_scan... Note that the article fails to mention that rising antisemitism in continental Europe just when evidence for relativity started to come in also played an important role (https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/why-didnt-einstein-win-a-second-nobel-prize-for-relativity https://hsm.stackexchange.com/questions/6106/why-didnt-einst...), this would have been an interesting point, given the discussions being held in the US today.

throwaway13337 7y ago
> It's when they go beyond interpreting and assisting to actually predicting is when things go wrong. It seems like another way of stating that is that philosophy is useful up until it gets into the realm of falsifiable and then is falsified. It makes me question, then, a lot of the usefulness of modern philosophy. I'd say philosophy that is useful must show some provable improvement into a way of life - that could be a model that can make a person more happy/productive/whatever but the explanatory power of modern philosophy is bunk.
- bb88 7y ago
  Physics takes what we know and extrapolates to what we don't. Logical conclusions based upon what we know, and what we assume must be the case. The best philosophy seeks to do the same thing, and present logical arguments proving or disproving something. Each argument is ideally falsifiable, and like physics, any unknown knowledge is recognized. And much of physics which though must have been the case has been proved wrong too. I'm looking at you, "Luminiferous Ether". Particularly fascinating to me was the arguments of AI, and whether consciousness can really be achieved by a computer. I would start with Searle's Chinese Room: https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/
  - new_guy 7y ago
    Searle's Chinese Room is really bad to give as a starting point for someone, it's basically just a homunculus.
    - jerf 7y ago
      The idea would be to grapple with the question, not just accept someone's answer, even if you agree with it in the end. Scott Aaronson has what is in my opinion so far the definitive take on the subject in https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , section 4. It's not just a homunculus, it's an exponentially large one that can't fit into the universe as we know it. While that doesn't necessarily completely destroy the thought experiment, it does, I think, rather color the discussion, vs. the mental image of some small space we'd normally call a "room".
- sobellian 7y ago
  There is some irony in using ideas articulated by Karl Popper to criticize philosophy's contribution to the sciences.
  - whatshisface 7y ago
    The parent isn't criticizing philosophy as a whole, just most philosophy, especially continental philosophy. It's also worth mentioning that if you assume P and then prove not P, you've proven not P. It's not a contradiction, it's proof by contradiction. If P is "philosophy leads to the right answers" and then you engage in philosophy, concluding "philosophy does not lead to the right answers," you have disproven the original statement by contradiction. It's kind of like how anyone who says they are a liar is a liar.
olooney 7y ago
The interplay between physicists and philosophers is particularly interesting here. Einstein himself mentions that reading Hume was helpful to him[1]: "Your exposition is also quite right that positivism suggested rel. theory, without requiring it. Also you have correctly seen that this line of thought was of great influence on my efforts and indeed E. Mach and still much more Hume, whose treatise on understanding I studied with eagerness and admiration shortly before finding relativity theory." - Albert Einstein [Logical] Positivism, which he also mentions, was a contemporary school of philosophy very much inspired by the empirical skepticism of Hume. But the influence goes both ways; P. W. Bridgman held Einstein up as an exemplar for his operational perspective[2] which is a very important (if problematic) idea in the philosophy of science that says we can have to define concepts in terms of the actual operation we will carry out when we measure it, for example measuring distance by attaching a mirror to it and timing how long it takes for a laser pulse reflected off it to come back to us. I agree with your statement that things can go badly wrong when philosophers start making predictions. At that point they are no longer doing philosophy but actually doing physics or some other kind of science... and unfortunately they are often unqualified for that kind of work. Some philosophers are strong logicians or mathematicians but few, I think, have enough applied mathematics or domain expertise to succeed when they start doing science. But this is also troubling in many ways. For example, there is no way that Descartes, merely by sitting in an oven and applying his method of skepticism, could have deduced special relativity. Indeed, if he had deduced it, he would have had to reject it (for the time being) as not parsimonious enough! The observations needed to even know that relativity is necessary (Michelson–Morley experiment, orbit of mercury, gravitational lensing) are so technical that you can't even make the observations unless you already have a fairly sophisticated theory of how the world works! For example, you have to know that light is a wave that can interfere with itself before you can build a Michelson interferometer. (This problem is sometimes called the theory-ladenness of observation[4].) We have to layer many models to reach the truth. For example, to conduct an experiment meant to verify some prediction of general relativity, I might design a instrument (such as a telescope) using classical physics. I would then operate the instrument using the intuitive model of human-scale physics learned in my childhood - turning knobs and reading dials. Should philosophy have to be consistent with all of these models and well as providing guidance about how to move between them? What exactly is the relationship between science and philosophy? I don't know if anyone has yet given a full account. My tentative view is that philosophy has to play midwife to science (providing methods, inspiration, and analyses) while being very careful to avoid competing with science in its own arena, as Bergson did. Socrates may have been able to play the perfect midwife (or so we're told) but for most subsequent philosophers it has proven very difficult to do pure philosophy without also letting their own preconceptions about how the world works accidentally slip in. [1]: https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf [2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness

by Jun8 7y ago

throwaway13337 7y ago

> It's when they go beyond interpreting and assisting to actually predicting is when things go wrong. It seems like another way of stating that is that philosophy is useful up until it gets into the realm of falsifiable and then is falsified. It makes me question, then, a lot of the usefulness of modern philosophy. I'd say philosophy that is useful must show some provable improvement into a way of life - that could be a model that can make a person more happy/productive/whatever but the explanatory power of modern philosophy is bunk.

bb88 7y ago
Physics takes what we know and extrapolates to what we don't. Logical conclusions based upon what we know, and what we assume must be the case. The best philosophy seeks to do the same thing, and present logical arguments proving or disproving something. Each argument is ideally falsifiable, and like physics, any unknown knowledge is recognized. And much of physics which though must have been the case has been proved wrong too. I'm looking at you, "Luminiferous Ether". Particularly fascinating to me was the arguments of AI, and whether consciousness can really be achieved by a computer. I would start with Searle's Chinese Room: https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/ https://www.iep.utm.edu/chineser/
- new_guy 7y ago
  Searle's Chinese Room is really bad to give as a starting point for someone, it's basically just a homunculus.
  - jerf 7y ago
    The idea would be to grapple with the question, not just accept someone's answer, even if you agree with it in the end. Scott Aaronson has what is in my opinion so far the definitive take on the subject in https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf https://www.scottaaronson.com/papers/philos.pdf , section 4. It's not just a homunculus, it's an exponentially large one that can't fit into the universe as we know it. While that doesn't necessarily completely destroy the thought experiment, it does, I think, rather color the discussion, vs. the mental image of some small space we'd normally call a "room".
sobellian 7y ago
There is some irony in using ideas articulated by Karl Popper to criticize philosophy's contribution to the sciences.
- whatshisface 7y ago
  The parent isn't criticizing philosophy as a whole, just most philosophy, especially continental philosophy. It's also worth mentioning that if you assume P and then prove not P, you've proven not P. It's not a contradiction, it's proof by contradiction. If P is "philosophy leads to the right answers" and then you engage in philosophy, concluding "philosophy does not lead to the right answers," you have disproven the original statement by contradiction. It's kind of like how anyone who says they are a liar is a liar.

olooney 7y ago

The interplay between physicists and philosophers is particularly interesting here. Einstein himself mentions that reading Hume was helpful to him[1]: "Your exposition is also quite right that positivism suggested rel. theory, without requiring it. Also you have correctly seen that this line of thought was of great influence on my efforts and indeed E. Mach and still much more Hume, whose treatise on understanding I studied with eagerness and admiration shortly before finding relativity theory." - Albert Einstein [Logical] Positivism, which he also mentions, was a contemporary school of philosophy very much inspired by the empirical skepticism of Hume. But the influence goes both ways; P. W. Bridgman held Einstein up as an exemplar for his operational perspective[2] which is a very important (if problematic) idea in the philosophy of science that says we can have to define concepts in terms of the actual operation we will carry out when we measure it, for example measuring distance by attaching a mirror to it and timing how long it takes for a laser pulse reflected off it to come back to us. I agree with your statement that things can go badly wrong when philosophers start making predictions. At that point they are no longer doing philosophy but actually doing physics or some other kind of science... and unfortunately they are often unqualified for that kind of work. Some philosophers are strong logicians or mathematicians but few, I think, have enough applied mathematics or domain expertise to succeed when they start doing science. But this is also troubling in many ways. For example, there is no way that Descartes, merely by sitting in an oven and applying his method of skepticism, could have deduced special relativity. Indeed, if he had deduced it, he would have had to reject it (for the time being) as not parsimonious enough! The observations needed to even know that relativity is necessary (Michelson–Morley experiment, orbit of mercury, gravitational lensing) are so technical that you can't even make the observations unless you already have a fairly sophisticated theory of how the world works! For example, you have to know that light is a wave that can interfere with itself before you can build a Michelson interferometer. (This problem is sometimes called the theory-ladenness of observation[4].) We have to layer many models to reach the truth. For example, to conduct an experiment meant to verify some prediction of general relativity, I might design a instrument (such as a telescope) using classical physics. I would then operate the instrument using the intuitive model of human-scale physics learned in my childhood - turning knobs and reading dials. Should philosophy have to be consistent with all of these models and well as providing guidance about how to move between them? What exactly is the relationship between science and philosophy? I don't know if anyone has yet given a full account. My tentative view is that philosophy has to play midwife to science (providing methods, inspiration, and analyses) while being very careful to avoid competing with science in its own arena, as Bergson did. Socrates may have been able to play the perfect midwife (or so we're told) but for most subsequent philosophers it has proven very difficult to do pure philosophy without also letting their own preconceptions about how the world works accidentally slip in. [1]: https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf https://www.pitt.edu/~jdnorton/papers/HumeMach.pdf [2]: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/operationalism/ [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michelson%E2%80%93Morley_exper... [4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory-ladenness