Of course, this is a reminder of Edward Feser's book "Why are (some) physicists so bad at philosophy?" who is also very well known by: “Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”.
We know:
1st: Newton stopped in very young years all his work on physics and turned to: THEOLOGY, most important: Satan's work here!
2nd: Einstein simply disliked quantum mechanics. His ridiculous argument was: " GOD doesn't throw dice", originally in german: Gott würfelt nicht. Very interesting, Einstein knows GOD's daily employment.
3rd: Meanwhile we have a "god's particle". philosophically a catastrophe.
4th: Many - mostly older - physicist present themselves as "physicist and philosopher", and argue on scholastic level.
return to the above question: Even here on RG we have amateur philosophers, in abundance: does "philosophy" help in performing good physics? My answer is: NO!
I'd say, aside from advanced physics, the subject is very driven by formulating a question and then stating a solution. No room for error (within the space, time and context that such scientists live), statements that are above belief. Philosophers on the other hand are content to pose a question and get in lieu of an answer three more questions that enlighten knowledge in a matter far from the hands-on solution of people to whom Newton ended all speculative and spiritual tinkering.
Philosophy deals subjective issues whereas Physics is all about objectivity. thus, two disciplines have different approaches for creation of knowledge.
Physicists are also very bad at accounting for costs from home economics point of view. If brilliant physicists had to earn a living like engineers/traders and female homemakers, they'd be out of work so soon that it wouldn't be funny. If philosophy doesn't help of finishing good physics, we only hope that it helps of affording good physics to be continued as mind's game once it started to make sense to a critical mass of 'thinking' individuals.
Why are physicists so bad at philosophy? For the same reason that high level athletes, or opera singers or engineers are so bad at philosophy. Because it is very hard to be good in two domains demanding so much learning. But in the old days , the only physicists were philosophers and mathematicians. And many of the physicists that revolutionized physics in the first part of the 20th centuries had extensive training in philosophy and were not bad philosopher. They were educated into very different educational system that exist today. Lee Smolin, Carlos Rovelli may not be great philosopher but both have found necessary to philosophically educated themself and have made used of this philosophical knowledge into their research. At its fundamental level, the research in physics is still a philosophical research in the sense that some fundamental philosophical questions are related to some fundamental questions in physics.
Rovelli: ''Einstein, Heisenberg, Newton, Bohr.... and many many others of the greatest scientists of all times, much greater than the names you mention, of course, read philosophy, learned from philosophy, and could have never done the great science they did without the input they got from philosophy, as they claimed repeatedly. You see: the scientists that talk philosophy down are simply superficial: they have a philosophy (usually some ill-digested mixture of Popper and Kuhn) and think that this is the "true" philosophy, and do not realize that this has limitation. ...''
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/the-philosophy-of-guessing-has-harmed-physics-expert-says/
'Philosophy is not the same as theology'... good guess. There are also experimental physicists and theoretical physicists. Feymann's 'shut up and calculate' is more leaning towards hands-on/experimental physicists. Theoretical physicists are mathematicians in drag, imho.
The foundation of all scientific research is Philosophy. "Philosophy: Mother of all sciences". So, philosophy can help to achieve good physics, of course.
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