Re: Why physicists should pay attention to the mind

Charles Francis wrote:
> <hartley@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:
>> rof@xxxxxxxxxxxx wrote:
>>> 2. The vast majority of physicists are ontologists.
>>
>> I don't think so.
>>
>> The reason physicists don't like to talk about interpretations of
>> quantum mechanics is that they are epistemologists.
>
> It's probably the other way round. They are epistemologists because they
> can't talk sensibly about interpretations of quantum mechanics

I think the dominance of epistemology in physics goes back at least as
far as Newton.

In 1687 Newton said:
> 'I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena
> (observational data) is to be called an hypothesis and
> hypotheses.........have no place in experimental philosophy. In this
> philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the data and
> afterwards rendered general by induction. Thus it was that ............
> (my) laws of motion and gravitation were........discovered.

I'm sure Newton said (and/or was misquoted or mistranslated as saying)
many foolish things, but this particular thing has been part of the
rules of physics for a very long time. One can claim (as rof appears to
do) that perhaps physicists should be more flexible and less bound by
rules and conventions, but to do so effectively one needs an accurate
view of what those rules are.

I also have a vague memory of pre QM writings (c1900?) that seem to
indicate that physicists were epistemologists then.

If I recall correctly there was a great deal of debate as to the degree
of "reality" that should be ascribed to the atom, with many claiming
that it should not be considered real in the sense that rof would
consider ontological, but rather that it be viewed as a convenient model.

That debate ended when too many things became known at about atoms for
them to be considered as just "models". In particular several
measurements of Avogadro's number (including Einstein's based on
Brownian motion). Being able to count them made them seem much more real.

Ralph Hartley

.

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