“Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”, said Richard Feynman. Some philosophers interpret that Feynman was also philosopher who simply rejected the jargon employed to express a definite idea. But, Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg thought that verbal expressions are required as parallel explanations to their mathematical theorems and implications, in the form of treatises on philosophy of physics. What are their roles in forming our ideas of physical realities?
Dear Fenda Pratama,
They are not parallels. The philosophy forms the basis as well as the completion of the mathematical structure in the middle. From philosophy alone sprang physics, and into philosophy it has inevitably marched forth, more so in the twentieth century. Together, they give us whatever understanding we have now. However, there is a seeming chasm between the two, for obvious reasons (lack of interdisciplinary communication and mutual respect), which does not auger well for either. this is to be remedied if we are to make steady progress in successfully comprehending the whole of nature, not just the physical universe.
HNY14
I like your question, i think yes and i hope yes, if not, we actualy live in mathematical Universe, if only math can explain everything then there is no doubt that we live in mathematical Universe.
Dear Mr. Leca,
First, most theoretical physicists agree that there is no any absolute method for constructive formulation of physical laws (Einstein suggested that we should not believe an answer given by them about what method they employed to arrive to the theories) . What I mean "mathematical formulation in physics" is that a simple a set of mathematical expressions in predicting or explaining data which is obtained by scientific methods (i.e. measurement, observation, etc.), then it is regarded as our framework of thinking about physical realities. There are numerous of them: Schroedinger equation, for example, which is sometimes regarded as pure mathematical dues to its abstract nature. Schoredinger did not work with experimental data, he worked with partial differential equations.
Regards.
To me mathematics is both logic and creativity. Philosophy in most is logic. before formulating a theory one has to do so deductive as well as inductive logic..So at the basic level and expression of theory in mathematical form, philosophy is involved. It is true, philosopher could not find and explain atom as the scientists, but who gave the idea of atom to think and explore and who suggested method of doing science?
I think that's because most scientists think that everything can be explained well if a complex system is reduced into its building components. This habitual attitude of mind seems so natural as necessity, or in philosophers' language a priori. But there is an interesting challenge to this view. Back to Schroedinger again, who wrote that Life is likely easier to analyze as a whole complete system, since life phenomena are determined by order, which is actually a statistical average of certain behavior of atoms or molecules. So, can we say that philosophy of science is not only the fundamental key, but also the product of science itself? Which is the most significant?
Sorry for the postponed answer.
The reason Feynman and cohorts despised philosophy was because it implied that they were wrong. Starting with the correct assumptions, proper logic discovers no contradictions or paradoxes. The appearance of such conundrums as the twin paradox, wave-particle duality, and the universe exploding out of nothing were sure indications that the wrong assumptions were used. The math can be elegant, while the physics makes no sense at all.
Dear Fenda Pratama,
They are not parallels. The philosophy forms the basis as well as the completion of the mathematical structure in the middle. From philosophy alone sprang physics, and into philosophy it has inevitably marched forth, more so in the twentieth century. Together, they give us whatever understanding we have now. However, there is a seeming chasm between the two, for obvious reasons (lack of interdisciplinary communication and mutual respect), which does not auger well for either. this is to be remedied if we are to make steady progress in successfully comprehending the whole of nature, not just the physical universe.
HNY14
@Radu, interesting point: Black-Scholes pde is a diffussion equation of variance, the problem is that in Economics we have the human-interactivity that destroys the initial assumptions, when in Physics this is not present. Electrons and other entities have not a brain in order to take different decisions under different situations like human beings.
@Glenn, I agree with you: a smart Taylor series representation that stops to divergence under some 'fixing' is just a curve-fitting approximation and not a self consistent theory.
>….Can philosophy of physics be regarded as a parallel explanation to the mathematical formulation used to express theoretical ideas? ….
Hello,
In my opinion the big problem with all sciences is that most of the scientists consider the mathematical formulations as "absolutely true" , "universal laws", "unbroken rules" ... but in reality, these formulations are only mathematical models that fit very approximately the reality !!! Thank you
Dear Samer,
.>… mathematical models that fit very approximately the reality !!!...… mathematical formulations as "absolutely true"..
Samer,
There is a huge, essential difference between mathematical modeling and math, aka pure math.
As David Hilbert once aptly put it Quote "We are often told that pure and applied mathematics are hostile to each other. This is not true. Pure and applied mathematics are not hostile to each other. Pure and applied mathematics have never been hostile to each other. Pure and applied mathematics cannot be hostile to each other because, in fact, there is absolutely nothing in common between them." Unquote.
Pure math has as of yet never been falsified, whereas the world is awash with mathematical models which do not quite dow.
Hello again,
I appreciate your comments gentlemen, I agree with you Chris that pure maths has nothing with math models, and that is why I am disturbed when I see a scientist treating a math model as to be an universal truth ...
Dear Glenn Borchardt, I wished you were right, but your claim stands up only in the domain of classical logics. In paraconsistent, quantum and some kinds of modal logics the paradoxes of physics are not eliminated, but formalized in a precise way.
Alfredo Pereira Jr.
in this regard, I think Bohr won the conceptual battle with Einstein... Even Bohm's interpretation (hidden variables to save the classical Newtonian framework for physics) has well-known problems...and what is incorrect with non-classical logics?
@Frenda
How does a 'mathematical formulation' have any explanatory ability, such as 'expressing theoretical ideas'? The same mathematical formation can be used for many different situations (one of the powers of mathematics - where 'quantity' can apply to many characteristics of reality).
There is a conceptualization required beyond (or behind) the math for there to be physics - which, I believe, is the reason for Einstein, Bohr, and others' requirement for verbal expression. It is why we consider such concepts as the 'multi-verse' - which does not reside in the equations, but in an interpretation of the equations.
'Philosophy', as a general term, can have many uses/meanings. Philosophy of Science can be considered a reflection upon, in particular, what, how, and why science is performed. Philosophy of Physics is a similar reflection for physics. A good reason to 'do' philosophy of physics is to consider assumptions, foundations, and methods implicit in the 'doing' of physics (consider 'The Philosophy Behind Physics' by Thomas Brody).
I'm not sure how a refection upon something (in this case, physics) could be the same as that something.
So, on two different levels, I do not see them as being the same.
Dear Frenda,
I think Feynman's complaint has to be seen in the context of about 1950. What Feynman was objecting to, I think, were the 'interpretations' of quantum physics that almost everyone at that time thought were necessary in order to explain the 'strangeness' of QM. Feynman found that QM worked perfectly well as long as you ignored the strangeness. What I suspect Feynman never realised is that the 'philosophers of science' of the time were simply ignorant of the foundations of physics. I would disagree with Glenn Borchardt because as far as I can see there nothing the least bit 'strange' or 'paradoxical' about QM if you think of physics in the terms of the people who originally devised it - Galileo, Descartes, Leibniz, Newton. These were real philosophers and they would have had no problems with QM because they did not suffer from the naive realism that had become established in Rutherford's time. None of them were satisfied that Democritan atoms could exist. Most of the 'strange' features of QM were predicted in the seventeenth century. It is just that because nobody reads the background advice in the original texts (Descartes Meditations, Newton's Scholium on Space and Time and Leibniz's New System etc.) nobody is aware of this. Wave particle duality is obviously how things will be because dynamics and observation are incommensurable - it is as simple as that.
Feynman was complaining about phoney philosophers. As others have said, all physics is born of natural philosophy and the math is just a notation for ideas about dynamic sequences. There is nothing mathematical about the idea of dynamic sequence - it is something that arises through the workings of a brain that involves no numbers at all.
Dear Pratama, you pose a very interesting question about the relationship of philosophy and physics. I suspect that there are a number of things going on in philosophy of physics, some of which, coming from an Einstein or Heisenberg, for instance might directly contribute to physics. I think, though, that the texts that physicists write, between their mathematical formulas, as it were, properly belong to physics, and if there is any philosophy of physics there, it is likely incidental to the main themes. Physics proper, I suppose, can approximate to philosophy of physics, and philosophy of physics may also sometimes approximate to physics proper. But there are other things going on in philosophy and philosophy of physics, or more generally in philosophy of science. I think that the physical explanations, parallel to mathematical formulations, chiefly belong to physics proper.
Philosophy is also concerned, with conceptual problems generally, and concern with conceptual problems of physics surely falls under this heading. What are space and time? --these are philosophical questions, though they also be physical questions. Part of what is involved for philosophy is to relate the physical concepts, and the development of physical concepts, to the ordinary concepts of common sense and everyday language, partly so that the educated public can keep track of what is going on, and partly too, so that results of specialized investigations in physics (and elsewhere) can be understood or made accessible to the (scientific or non-scientific) non-specialists. Surely chemistry has long been interested and influenced by developments in physics, for instance, though it maintains its own distinctive vocabulary and modes of description and explanation. Likewise, other sciences, or the humanities may be influenced by developments in physics--up to and including theology. (While I don't do theology, in historical perspective, the influence has sometimes even seemed to run the other way from philosophy to physics--as in Newton?) While I don't know the source of the quip from Feynman, I suspect that his work may have sometimes been more philosophical, as with Einstein and Heisenberg, than this quotation may suggest.
Physicists, of course, sometimes also do philosophy and even write for the philosophy journals, but what they mostly do, quite properly, is physics. Even the philosophers who have studied physics closely, I think, would think twice or more, before trying to do any physics themselves. A Bertrand Russell, say, could write a book on the ABC's of Relativity (as I recall his title), but he wisely decided not to try to do physics himself.
H.G. Callaway
Dear All,
One can only feel sad for the attitude of scientists towards Philosophy of anything including science.
Regards
Rajat
BTW: Has anyone tracked down the quotation attributed to Feynman? It seems we are yet to see a source, though the quotation is widely attributed to Feynman; and it is widely debated on the web. If he did say it, then consulting the wider context of the statement might help discussion of it along.
H.G. Callaway
Feynman had some struggles with philosophers in his Lectures Vol I (German) on pages 232, 233, 234, 325, 341, 527ff.
These philosophers where not real people but fictitious examples of attitudes. Feynman tells us that some philosophers claim that motion is not detectable without observation of the outer world, which is wrong. It is only true for constant rectilinear motion. Counter example: Foucault’s pendulum: centrifugal force is detectable without taking the outer world into account.
A philosopher might then maintain that we ourselves produce the centrifugal force. – amazingly enough Feynman tells us that this is true for all we know. We don’t know if there was a centrifugal force without stars. (loc. cit. 234)
At another spot (loc.cit. 325) Feynman writes that most of the philosophical problems arise from physical quantities, units and other artificialities that are not a part of nature.
That would mean that no physicist is free of this kind of philosophical problems, even according to Feynman.
Yes, and Feynman has his own section of philosophy at the beginning of Volume III on quantum theory. It seems likely the ornithology quip was a way of getting out of annoying conversations with people asking silly questions.
I agree with Clifford's point that ignorance of and inability to understand the basics of physics is a pretty widespread disease amongst contemporary academic philosophers. Russell's complaint seems even more relevant now - I even wonder if mostly they have lost the plot on all fronts, but there are a few valuable opinions around. And I think one answer to the original question is that philosophy should not try to provide an **alternative** account of the world -what they call a 'non-reductive' account that usually means pretending not to use causal language but actually borrowing from it and using it badly instead.
And to my mind we do need a parallel account to go with the maths in at least the simple sense that we need to know how to apply the maths. We tend to forget the early years of getting to know what a ruler is, and a clock, and how they are useful. Later we need to ponder how counterintuitive the implications of these devices can be - especially for time. I also think that it would be worth a lot of physicists who talk about 'interpretations' of modern physics getting a little familiar with what has been learnt from neuropsychology of perception. The 'classical world' is merely a set of arbitrary signs our brains rustle up to indicate to us what has been inferred from incoming signals about the dynamic dispositional patterns around us and the instances of operation of those dispositions. The idea that it is odd in a quantum dynamic world not to see things fuzzy is a basic failure to understand perception apart from anything else. So maybe we need not so much a philosophical account as an account that draws on all the relevant disciplines that relate to what the language of physics is about - maybe six of them in all.
I agree that many problems arise when we or the philosophers lose touch with reality. But problems with realism are tricky: realism has no way to express that our best current theories might be wrong. (van Fraassen 1980, p. 7).
This is so because the meanings of our words are formed by our way of handling the objects in our daily lives.
Cj Nev,
How about e=mc² ? That one gave rise to , or at least foreran, a slew of still ongoing discussions on the relativity of reality
How about Bell's theorem ?
Last but not least, how about Schrödinger's equation ? Which gave rise to no less than 30 and counting interpretations of QM (of which about 14 are mainstream) and a raft of treatises on 'The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics' , along with never-ending philosophical discussions on 'wave function realism' and the like, and countless books by philosophers (Healey, d'Espagnat, and so many others)
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