Re: Physics & Philosophy
From: Patrick Reany (reany_at_asu.edu)
Date: 06/14/04
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Date: 14 Jun 2004 11:48:19 -0700
Bart Van Hove <bartvanhove@skynet.be> wrote in message news:<pan.2004.06.10.18.47.01.849114@skynet.be>...
> On Thu, 10 Jun 2004 15:55:43 +0200, willi wrote:
>
> > dans l'article 9gWxc.4538$eu.2263@attbi_s02, Robert J. Kolker à
> > robert_kolker@hotmail.com a écrit le 10/06/04 11:57 :
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> jimp@specsol-spam-sux.com wrote:
> >>
> >>> Bart Van Hove <bartvanhove@skynet.be> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>> My question is how philosophy relates to physics and science in general:
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> It doesn't.
It does! How Western science education has failed. If education in
science had done its job right, you'd know the answer to your question
already! Every high school graduate would.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Not true. There are several good epistemological theses which describe
> >> how scientific theories differ from non-scientific theories.
> >>
> >> See works by Peirce, Popper, Hempel, Samson. The big break away from
> >> metaphysics is due to David Hume (1711-1776).
> >>
> >> In addition to all this, some philosophical contributions to science
> >> were made by scientis who also wore philosopher hats. For example
> >> Newton, Mach and Einstein. For a good review of method see Newton's
> >> -Principia Mathematica-, Book 3 and Newton's -Optiks-. Newton was very
> >> self aware about what he was doing and how it differend from all
> >> previous Natural Philosophy (that is what physical science used to be
> >> called). Newton who invented Modern Science version 1.0 and vanquished
> >> Aristotle invoked God within the corpus of -Principia Mathematica-.
> >> Newton wrote twice as much on theology and scriptures than he did on
> >> physics and his theology and science were entwined (or should we say
> >> entangled).
> >>
> >>
> >> Bob Kolker
> >>
> > Perhaps one should precise :"how GOOD philosophy relates to GOOD physics".
> > But you have then to define good !
> > I think that at least a part of Newton's theological works are highly
> > questionable, especially his numerology. He certainly was upheld by his
> > conceptions of God when he had to invoke far-ranged interaction and also
> > vacuum ; it was a psychological help, not arguments.
> >
> > In science you use general principles (mostly hidden) which are metaphysical
> > (not refutable) : on the use of logic, on causes, separability, existence of
> > objects and so on.
Not bad. But beyond their use, is the variety of viewpoints on what
restrictions should be put on their use (in the form of physical
models or concepts) and what specific criteria should be made explicit
to enforce that use. These are also topics of the philosophy of
physics. Philosophy gets used all over the place in physics. In the
past it was explicitly recognized as such, but today, although it
still gets used, it's hidden under a blanket of denial and/or
indifference, mostly arising out of ignorance. The lack of specific
use of philosophical terms in modern physics literature is partly the
result of the majority of physicists not even knowing them, or if they
do, their lack of courage to employ them in a mindset in which their
use is at best superfluous. A failing of the ego philosophy of
"not-invented-here" (NIH).
If the Esablishment doesn't mandate the teaching of the philosophy of
physics to physics students, it won't get learned.
> >
> > 20th century science have shown that many epistemological postulates are
> > false or useless and even counter-productive: those above, those on space
> > and time and even the very old and quasi-ineradicable concept of essence or
> > substance.
> >
> > I would sum up :
> > 1) the scientific discoveries put limits on theories, even in philosophy.
> > 2) philosophy is welcomed in science if it brings creative ideas but should
> > be put aside when it pretends to impose concepts or limits.
> > 3) hidden presuppositions in science should be tracked down.
>
> I agree with that, still: having put these limits on the use of
> philosophy, doesn't it boil down to plain creative thinking? Ofcourse this
> is a step in the scientific process of explaining some occuring effect.
>
> Some philosophy-enthousiasts I know claim it's the source of science, I'm
> not eager to give philosophy that much credit (I agree with Uncle Al that
> "real" in-depth philosophy doesn't produce any actual results).
Then you believe that someday all new physics could be done by
computers and not have people involved in it at all? How much is being
purposely unanalyzed by that key word "Creativity" that is
philosophical? Einstein and Heisenberg were creative thinkers, but
their creativity was strongly influenced by their personal
philosophical formal points of view. They didn't just sit down in a
lotus position and wait for God to tell then the "truth" of deep
reality. They proactively developed a formal point of view on how to
proceed, and on top of that foundation they constructed theories to do
the job, as they saw fit.
You need to learn a lot more philosophy before you make such claims
about philosophy and physics. The problem with physics is often that
one has too many possibilities to make choices from. One needs to
impose a formal point of view, as Einstein said:
In order to construct a theory, it is not enough to
have a clear conception of the goal. One must also
have a FORMAL POINT OF VIEW which will sufficiently
restrict the unlimited variety of possibilities.
-- Einstein, Ideas and Opinion, The fundaments of
theoretical physics, p. 328 (emphasis my own)
>
> I agree with that, still: having put these limits on the use of
> philosophy, doesn't it boil down to plain creative thinking? Ofcourse this
> is a step in the scientific process of explaining some occuring effect.
>
> Some philosophy-enthousiasts I know claim it's the source of science, I'm
> not eager to give philosophy that much credit (I agree with Uncle Al that
> "real" in-depth philosophy doesn't produce any actual results).
Philosophy is NOT in competition against physics to explain the world!
Philosophy investigates (among many other things) the logical
structure of science. And it helps to provide criteria to choose a
personal formal point of view, as claimed by Einstein. In his 1916
paper on GR, Einstein wrote this:
In classical mechanics, and no less in the special
theory of relativity, there is an inherent epistemological
defect which was, perhaps for the first time, clearly
pointed out by Ernst Mach.....No answer can be
admitted as epistemologically satisfactory, unless the
reason given is an observable fact of experience.
--- Found in: The foundation of the general theory of
relativity, A. Einstein, Dover Books, 1916, reprinted,
pp112-113.
In other words, motion with respect to invisible absolute space did
not fulfill Einstein's personal view of a justifiable claim to
physical knowledge---that's the epistemological defect of Newton's
mechanics and SR, as Einstein saw it. Was he right? That's not a
question that physics or philosophy can answer. But we can say that
Einstein himself gave this FPOV credit for moving his thoughts in a
direction that eventually produced GR, a theory that works.
One aspect to philosophy is to make us aware of the ultimate
limitations on human knowledge. Heisenberg understood this. You should
read his book Physics and Philosophy. You should also read Einstein's
book, Ideas and Opinions, a collection of his essays on physics and
other issues.
If we consider that part of the theory of relativity
which may nowadays in a sense be regarded as
bona fide scientific knowledge, we note two
aspects which have a major bearing on this theory.
The whole development of the theory turns on the
question of whether there are physically preferred
states of motion in Nature (physical relativity problem).
Also, concepts and distinctions are admissible to the
extent that observable facts can be assigned to them
without ambiguity (stipulation that concepts and
distinctions should have meaning). This postulate,
pertaining to epistemology, proves to be of
fundamental importance.
--- Found in: Fundamental Ideas and Problems of
the Theory of Relativity, A. Einstein, Albert
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity,
G. Tauber, Crown Press, p51.
This paragraph of Einstein's is hard to understand to most physicists
today because they are not trained in philosophy, even in the
philosophy of science, which would do them some good. However, the
physicists of Einstein's time were much more knowledgable of the
philosophy of physics than those of today. They understood, no doubt,
what he meant: He meant that, based on the known empirical facts of
his time, there was no "meaning" to the assumption of the existence of
a preferred frame of inertial reference, as Lorentz's theory of
electrodynamics supposed! Not having such a "meaning" based on
empiricism, there was no justification to Einstein in claiming a
legitimate "distinction" should be posited between any two inertial
frames of reference. Einstein proposed what I call the "pure principle
of relativity" (not to be confused with the much weaker Lorentz
covariance principle) on this basis:
There is no empirical grounds to formulate any kind
of distinction of any inertial frame of reference
over any other inertial frame for all theoretical
purposes.
It's obvious that this is not a metaphysical statement per se, though
it was based on one; but rather, it is a theoretical design principle
that restricts the kinds of theories one can make under its purview.
In other words, it was part of his formal point of view which he
adopted to build special relativity upon. That's a clear example of
philosophy preceeding physics! Uncle Al will give you no evidence that
his claim is true, but I gave you evidence that his claim is false.
Einstein claimed that this principle was in conformance with his
doctrine that one should not be making positive knowledge claims about
physical concepts which have insufficient "meaning" in a physical
theory. Of course, one can agree with Einstein that one must have
meaningful concepts before one can claim to have legitimate knowledge
claims made about them, and yet strongly disagree with Einstein about
what the critria ought to be accepted to justify 'meaning' in a
theory. In fact, there are three primary ways to do this,
corresponding to how the instrumentalists, posivitists, and scientific
realists formulate these criteria.
To the posivitists, meaning requires strong operationalism
(verificationism): meaning is restricted to those concepts which can
be directly and unambiguously correlated to sets of physical
operations by which the concept is either identified or measured in
physicality.
To the instrumentalists, meaning requires weak operationalism: meaning
is restricted to 1) those concepts which can be directly and
unambiguously correlated to sets of physical operations by which the
concept is either identified or measured in physicality, or 2) to
"paper and pencil" operations (Bridgman) by which concepts find their
meaning implicitly by their relationship to the entire theory.
To the scientific realists, meaning is either 1) immediately apparent
by the concept's obvious correspndence to something visual or
tangible, or 2) intuitively justfied.
To scientific realists, science can be used to justify the
"approximate existence" of things which correspond to physical models
employed by successful theories. They're out to use science to find
deep reality! Scientific realists are hostile to any theory which
purports to describe the physical world using arbitrarily invented
concepts, especially what they call "mathematical theories." To them,
that stikes out against the primary purpose of science -- the claimed
search for TRUTH. "What is the true nature of the world?" is their
battle cry against human ignorance. Naturally, they tend to be very
hostile toward Copenhagen quantum mechanics and relativity. Scientific
realists are by their demanding philosophical choices the least free
to adopt the principle of logical ecomony in their formal points of
view.
To instrumentalists, science is a means of predicting physical events
(through physical laws) within successful theories. Physical concepts
and models are free creations of the human mind which serve as
"instruments of thought" for the invention/construction of theories
that work. They adopt weak operationalism. In the pursuit of these
"instruments of thought," guessing, conjuring, or intuition are all
equally valid as means toward their production. Science is neutral to
finding deep reality! Science is NOT about reverse-engineering deep
reality. To instrumentalists, Copenhagen quantum mechanics and
relativity are not particularly "weird" at all. In fact, the "weird"
theory that works is worth a million "commonsense" theories that
don't. Instrumentalists are by their relaxed philosophical choices the
most free to adopt the principle of logical ecomony in their formal
points of view. For the record, I'm an instrumentalist.
To the posivitists, science is a means of making positive statements
about the physical realm. To protect the purity of those positive
statements, they have removed from science anything iffy, and that
includes all those "paper and pencil" concepts, like fields,
potentials, wave functions, and atomic and subatomic particles. There
is no distinction between science and natural philosophy to a
positivist. This is known as "scientism."
There are few posivitists today. Most are instrumentalists, but there
are a large number of scientific realists, especially among the
so-called "cranks." There are even physicists who adhere to this
viewpoint as well. It's both interesting and sad to me that most
physicists today know so little about the philosophy of physics that
they couldn't even begin to accurately characterize themselves as to
which of these three views they adhered to the most, if any.
-------------------------------------
What Einstein was telling us is close to the philosophy espoused by
the positivist movement -- a philosophical movement that had begun
with August Comte and had found a champion in Mach who further refined
it, and later in the Logical Posivists who stressed the nature of
language as the bearer of knowledge, which was taken for granted in
science before they made a detailed study of the issue. In their view,
for sentences to be meaningful the words they contain must be
meaningful first. Although that sounds commonsensical, it turned out
that the physicists of their time had not adhered to that dictum and
so physics models were constantly being introduced into physics which
had no particular "meaning" in terms of manifest physical operations
or phenomena. Whether this is a good or bad thing depends on your
personal philosophy about it.
The special relativity theory resulted in appreciable
advances. It reconciled mechanics and electrodynamics.
It reduced the number of logically independent
hypotheses regarding the latter. It enforced the
need for a clarification of the fundamental concepts
in epistemological terms.
--- Found in: Fundamental Ideas and Problems of
the Theory of Relativity, A. Einstein, Albert
Einstein's Theory of General Relativity,
G. Tauber, Crown Press, p54.
Epistemology is basically the study of the justification for all
knowledge claims. Apparently, Einstein's formal point of view about
how to proceed to deconstruct the preeminence of the inertial system
concept in the foundation to physics was strongly influenced by his
personal notions of causality and its foundation in epistemology. Look
at that thought experiment which Einstein setup in his 1916 GR paper.
He described two mutually rotating massive orbs, one a perfect sphere,
the other distorted. He asked a simple question (which I will put into
my own words):
If one is to attempt to provide a causal explanation
of the physical distinctions between the two orbs, how
does one justify the knowledge claim: "I know what
is the ultimate seat of causation for this distinction?"
Obviously, the distinction could not rest in an explanation of their
relative motion. Einstein was well aware of Newton's answer to this.
Newton had no causal explanation in terms of how this happens, though
he assumed the existence of an absolute space (the equivalent to the
absolute status of the inertial motion concept) by which acceleration
is meaningful locally. Einstein's personal philosophy was that this
absolute space of Newton's in which absolute accelerations lives is
"ghostly." It was not only not detectible or visual, it was that way
in particular because it was unaffected by the presence of matter
altogether. Thus it failed in reciprocity: it could affect the
behavior of matter, but was not, in turn, affected in any way by
matter. Einstein's solution was to posit that the ulitmate seat of
causation for this difference between the "at rest" orb and the
accelerated (i.e., rotated) orb was the set of visible background
stars providing an observation frame for comparison, and thereby
providing a "meaning" to the claim that the distorted orb was
rotating, while the spherical orb was not, a view first held by Mach.
Finally, was Einstein a positivist? I don't think so. Einstein was a
long-time believer in the existence of the atom and he would not have
given away his right to make theories that used the atom concept,
which was demanded by Machian positivism. Einstein accepted some, but
not all, doctrines of positivism.
We read in Einstein's essay 'Reply to Critics' (in P.A. Schilpp, ed.
Einstein: Philosopher-Scientist, La Salle, IL, Open Court, pages
683-4, published in 1949, a few years before his death in 1955) his
own eclectic instrumentalist philosophy, which sums up his philosophy
as a reaction against the positivists who would have placed his mind
in a cage:
The reciprocal relationship of epistemology and
science is of noteworthy kind. They are dependent on
each other. Epistemology without contact with science
becomes an empty scheme. Science without epistemology
is --- in sofar as it is thinkable at all --- primitive
and muddled. However, no sooner has the epistemologist,
who is seeking a clear system, fought his way through
to such a system, than he is inclined to interpret the
thought-content of science in the sense of his system
and to reject whatever does not fit into his system.
The scientist, however, cannot afford to carry his
striving for epistemological systematic that far. He
accepts gratefully the epistemological conceptual
analysis; but the external conditions, which are set
for him by the facts of experience, do not permit him
to let himself be too much restricted in the construction
of his conceptual world by the adherence to an
epistemological system. He therefore must appear to the
systemic epistemologist as a type of unscupulous
opportunist; he appears as a realist insofar as he seeks
to describe a world independent of the acts of perception;
as IDEALIST insofar as he looks upon the concepts and
theories as free inventions of the human spirit (not
logically derivable from what is empirically given); as
positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and
theories justified only to the extent to which they
furnish a logical representation of relations among
sensory experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or
Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of
logical simplicity as an indispensible and effect tool
of his research.
[--emphasis mine]
Obviously, Einstein had taken from positivism its "best" without
accepting its anti-metaphysical aspects. Einstein wrote all over the
place about his philosophical views, but without distinguishing which
of those view are "scientific" per se and which are just those of his
personal natural philosophy. And that fact can make him appear
self-inconsistent.
Patrick
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