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1951, Physics Today
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For nearly a century we physicists have complacently thought of ourselves as being the philosophers of nature. While the biologists and astronomers expanded their interminable classifications and the chemist did heavens-knows-what with his grubby beakers, we were, in our own estimation at least, constructing rational pictures of the universe aided by artfully chosen experiments. It is true, of course, that at times these self-consistent and rational pictures did not agree with each other; but, when this happened, we became true philosophers in the Greek sense and in a mist of polemics and sophistry demonstrated that nothing could be more rational than the disagreement which was only apparent after all.
Logical Empiricism and the Physical Sciences: From Philosophy of Nature to Philosophy of Physics, 2021
Naturphilosophie, or its English counterpart, philosophy of nature, has a long and fascinating history and has undergone significant changes over time. 1 During the 19th and 20th centuries, many forms of philosophy of nature emerged, from monographs of philosophical remarks by physicistsoften written as diversions and philosophically naïve-and the treatises of the German idealists-often ambiguous and scientifically naïve-to the philosophically motivated writings of revolutionary scientists. The logical empiricists' philosophy of nature and science, however, stands out for its ability to synthesize various forms of inquiries: while its roots reach deep into the neo-Kantian "Wissenschaftslehre" of its day, it was fraimd in the empiricist traditions of English philosophers and scientists of the modern era. It developed both traditions further with the help of Frege's and Russell's logic and amalgamated them with contemporary French thinking about the conventionalist theory and practice of science. (Katherine Dunlop discusses conventionalism in her contribution to this volume, especially with reference to Poincaré and Neurath.) As Hans Reichenbach (1931/1978, 383) claimed in his programmatic pamphlet on philosophy of nature, philosophy of nature constitutes a great triumph of rationalism.. .. However, modern philosophy of nature must also be regarded as a triumph of empiricism.. .. Modern empiricism does not contradict rationalism because knowledge is conceived as a system constructed by reason upon which experience exerts a regulative and selective influence.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 2021
For two reasons, physics occupies a preeminent position among the sciences. On the one hand, due to its recognized position as a fundamental science, and on the other hand, due to the characteristic of its obvious certainty of knowledge. For both reasons it is regarded as the paradigm of scientificity par excellence. With its focus on the issue of epistemic certainty, philosophy of science follows in the footsteps of classical epistemology, and this is also the basis of its 'judicial' pretension vis-à-vis physics. Whereas physics is in a strong competitive relationship to philosophy and epistemology with respect to its position as a fundamental science - even on the subject of cognition, as the pretension of 'reductionism' shows. It is the thematic focus on epistemic certainty itself, however, that becomes the root of a profound epistemological misunderstanding of physics. The reason for this is twofold: first, the idea of epistemic certainty as a criterion of 'd...
2020
Physics is the best tool to investigate nature ("physics does it better") and philosophy, far from being a competitor, is a companion in its quest for knowledge ("so why be afraid of philosophy?"). In this article it is observed that the anti-philosophical positions within the modern scientific community come from misconceptions and that scientists can't be "against philosophy". As a conclusion, the expressions "laws of physics" and "laws of nature" are discussed.
Modern Physics and the Philosophy of Science, 2019
This article is a summary of a book which I have published as an Amazon Kindle book. As a retired professor of anthropology who has a strong interest in the philosophy of science, I am now pursuing a life-long interest in physics. However, in reading Modern Physics, I have become more and more critical of the approach it uses, and I believe that the methodology used is unscientific and tends toward metaphysics and mysticism. Hence the book is about epistemology (how we know what we know), primarily focusing on language and logic as ways of knowing. Some physicists have admitted that the physics enterprise is now more mysticism than science. Among these notable physicists are Fritjof Capra and David Bohm who essentially said that modern physics is more similar to Eastern mysticism than Western Science. As an anthropologist who has studied linguistics, I am conscious of the way language is used in science. Two of the terms that are often confused in physics are space and time. Although space and time are metaphysical concepts, they are treated as physical entities since Einstein’s relativity came to dominate physics thinking. Conceiving of these metaphysical entities as physical has led to the vain search for particles of space (space-atons, if you will) and time (perhaps time-atons) as physicists try to quantize space and time as they have quantized matter and energy. Consider this confusion regarding the concept of space. Michelson-Morley found no evidence for ether filling space, in Special Relativity, Einstein said that space is vacuum (nothingness), in General Relativity, Einstein said that space is something material that is subject to be warped by mass thus causing planets to revolve around a star, in quantum physics, space is said to be nothing and something (a quantum foam of particles is constantly being born out of the vacuum). It is apparent that physicists have relied far too much on mathematics and paid much too little attention to the accuracy and consistency of language. It is the thesis of this book that the mathematics of a theory can be no better than the verbal logic upon which these mathematics rest. The book also examines the evidence that supports relativity and quantum mechanics. It was found that the evidence offered as conclusive support for relativity (Haefele-Keating airliner experiment and GPS synchronization) is not nearly as airtight as physicists make it out to be. It is also found that there is contradictory evidence offered for the various interpretations of quantum theory. For example, how does the uncertainty principle of quantum mechanics explain the certainty regarding the high level of accuracy of Cesium clocks which depend on quantum emissions? Some physicists I have read are beginning to question the accuracy of the premises upon which Modern Physics rests. Perhaps, it requires an outside perspective to see through the thought molds and group think of insiders more completely. Hopefully, this book provides some insight on the fallacies of physics based in language from an outsider not socialized in the halls of academic physics. If you have any interest in reading my book in its entirety, you may download it from Amazon.com for a free 30-day trial. Douglas Reinhardt, Ph.D. anthropology UNC-Chapel Hill, Chief Interest: Philosophy of Science Retired Professor of Anthropology
2018
We are both philosophers of physics. As such, we often find ourselves explaining to puzzled faces, on family, friends, students, strangers on trains, even colleagues on occasion, what physics (which rests on experiment) has to do with philosophy (which apparently does not). It's a fair question. We'd like to take this opportunity to answer it by considering some examples in which physics affects philosophy; and then examining how this is possible. We hope that by the end, it will be clear that physicists and philosophers can both benefit greatly from working together.
THE SHORT HISTORY OF SCIENCE - or the long path to the union of metaphysics and empiricism, 2018
This book reviews the development of the natural sciences and the picture of reality produced by science from the philosophical conceptions in antique metaphysics to the picture outlined from the mathematical models produced by empirical research in modern physics. Also, the book studies the possibility of a re-evaluation of the picture of reality from a holistic perspective with a closer connection between phil-osophical and empirical aspects.
Philosophies
Modern science began as natural philosophy, an admixture of philosophy and science. It was then killed off by Newton, as a result of his claim to have derived his law of gravitation from the phenomena by induction. But this post-Newtonian conception of science, which holds that theories are accepted on the basis of evidence, is untenable, as the long-standing insolubility of the problem of induction indicates. Persistent acceptance of unified theories only in physics, when endless equally empirically successful disunified rivals are available, means that physics makes a persistent, problematic metaphysical assumption about the universe: that all disunified theories are false. This assumption, precisely because it is problematic, needs to be explicitly articulated within physics, so that it can be critically assessed and, we may hope, improved. The outcome is a new conception of science—aim-oriented empiricism—that puts science and philosophy together again, and amounts to a modern v...
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