Philosophy and Science

[Zip]

Originally Posted by Reality Apologist

The Direction of Time and the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics

Well if it isn't another philosopher offering his or her 'novel' take on well-established scientific theory

Don't you think it's a little one-sided? You use some basic results from thermodynamics out of context to develop some arbitrary philosophy, because you don't understand the underlying mathematics, yet you contribute nothing of value back to science.

[Reality Apologist]

Originally Posted by Zip

Well if it isn't another philosopher offering his or her 'novel' take on well-established scientific theory

Don't you think it's a little one-sided? You use some basic results from thermodynamics out of context to develop some arbitrary philosophy, because you don't understand the underlying mathematics, yet you contribute nothing of value back to science.

You have no idea what I do. I'm not offering any "take" on statistical mechanics, or using it to develop any arbitrary philosophy. The professor I'm working with has a PhD in theoretical physics, not philosophy; this isn't some stupid post-modern project, but rather a serious inquiry into what some of the most successful physical theories ever produced actually mean about the world. I won't pretend to understand all the mathematics behind it, but I do understand a great deal of them, and I'm constantly working to understand more.

There's a hell of a lot more to science than just crunching equations; science, fundamentally, is about the physical world, which means it's about absolutely everything there is. The "don't think about what this means, just run the equations" approach to physics certainly has its place--it's given us a hell of a lot in terms of predictive and engineering power--but there's a lot of interesting conceptual work to be done as well. What does (for example) quantum mechanics mean? If it is about the world in which we live--and surely it is--what does it tell us about that world? The raw formalism--the linear equations of motion--have been spectacularly useful, but we're really no closer to understanding what those equations actually track in the world today than we were 50 years ago. The questions that Bohm, Einstein, Rosen, Bell, and all the rest of those characters struggled with are still with us today. Understanding the mathematics is absolutely vital if we're going to undertake this project--despite what charlatans like Deepak Chopra would have us believe, you can't make any headway in interpreting quantum mechanics without a lot of math--but those mathematics alone aren't enough. We need good conceptual analysis.

Something similar is true of statistical mechanics. It works very well: the statistical mechanical formulation of the second law of thermodynamics seems much more satisfactory than the classical formulation. Still, there are a lot of interesting questions and implications that need to be explored. The statistical definition of entropy is often cited as a physical locus for what we experience as the "direction" of time, but things are not as simple as they appear to be, and a lot of work still needs to be done.

Much of the good work that's been done in physics in the last century has been at least partially philosophical in nature: Einstein's greatest achievements were predicated on his ability to think conceptually and then follow out those thoughts in mathematics, not on just crunching equations. Einstein did what he did (that is) because he thought about the foundations of physics as much as he did about physics itself. I'm not sure how you can deny that that gives something back to science. Indeed, most physicists will admit that the good philosophical exploration of fundamental physics (and, I'll admit, there's a tremendous amount of bad exploration by people who clearly wouldn't know a linear equation if it slapped them in the face) has been very helpful in suggesting directions for future research, and in clarifying what already-existing work means about the world.

Apropos this discussion, I just saw this interview with Alan Sokal today: he's talking about precisely this topic. Incidentally, the one philosopher he mentions by name as someone he respects--David Albert, the guy with the PhD in theoretical physics who went into philosophy later--is my advisor. You shouldn't make assumptions about fields of study about which you know nothing.

[Reality Apologist]

In the interest of keeping the original thread clean, I've split this discussion off and taken it to your turf, Zip. Let's open this up for wider discussion.

[harry_hardcore_hoedown]

Originally Posted by Zip

Well if it isn't another philosopher offering his or her 'novel' take on well-established scientific theory

Don't you think it's a little one-sided? You use some basic results from thermodynamics out of context to develop some arbitrary philosophy, because you don't understand the underlying mathematics, yet you contribute nothing of value back to science.

The worst cases are people like Deepak Chopra (Greyfox's idol), who support their inane bullshit by choosing a field of science and using whatever buzzwords they can conjure to make it sound as though it supports their philosophy.

[nshanin]

Originally Posted by harry_hardcore_hoedown

The worst cases are people like Deepak Chopra (Greyfox's idol), who support their inane bullshit by choosing a field of science and using whatever buzzwords they can conjure to make it sound as though it supports their philosophy.

I don't know about you but I thought "What the bleep do we know" was an excellent piece of film that changed my life.

[harry_hardcore_hoedown]

Originally Posted by nshanin

I don't know about you but I thought "What the bleep do we know" was an excellent piece of film that changed my life.

I've never heard of it, but I'll look into it.

[Reality Apologist]

Originally Posted by harry_hardcore_hoedown

I've never heard of it, but I'll look into it.

Please don't. It's absolutely awful--a two hour long misunderstanding of quantum mechanics. It's precisely the kind of crap that Zip seems to think I'm involved with: taking a superficial understanding of science and using it to draw insane conclusions about the world. Their thesis is that QM somehow implies that consciousness is prior to matter, and that we can exploit the role of the observer in QM to make the world do whatever we want. David Albert--my advisor--does appear as the sole voice of reason, though.

[Stainless]

"DNA itself isn't fit at all; unlike a molecule of iron or hydrogen"

Whoever Deepak Chopra is, he is definitly a gargantuan idiot if he thinks Hydrogen is an example of a "fit molecule". That was from an article where he was arguing against evolution, by the way. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak...ou_b_6105.html

It would seem he doesn't really understand the concept of evolution very well.

[Reality Apologist]

Originally Posted by Stainless

"DNA itself isn't fit at all; unlike a molecule of iron or hydrogen"

Whoever Deepak Chopra is, he is definitly a gargantuan idiot if he thinks Hydrogen is an example of a "fit molecule". That was from an article where he was arguing against evolution, by the way. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/deepak...ou_b_6105.html

It would seem he doesn't really understand the concept of evolution very well.

He doesn't seem to understand anything very well, except perhaps how to encourage people to buy his books. In any case, he serves as a paradigm case for what philosophy of science is not. He has no formal training in either philosophy or physics, and butchers both of them mercilessly.

[Zip]

I only have a few minutes at the moment, but I fully intend to return to this discussion today or tomorrow. In so far as whether I am qualified to comment or have some idea of what you do, the history and philosophy of science department at my university has been consistently evaluated as one of the top five if not best*, and this is reflected in the culture here and the courses I've taken. Maybe it is the case that much of the serious work in your field goes unappreciated because of poor quality, populist work by authors like Chopra, but notwithstanding, you suggest that working physicists know the mathematics but have a poor conceptual understanding of the empirical work they do, and I don't think that this is the case at all.

Before you suggest that I've taken your remarks out of context, let me clarify. On the one hand you have researchers like Albert and Feynman, who have produced some good work that presents abstract concepts from modern physics in an informal yet accessible manner. Even Whitehead's process philosophy, abstract and non-secular as it was, contributed to a new, pragmatic understanding of the scientific method in medicine.

On the other hand, you have the majority of researchers in the philosophy of science today, who take a post-modernist approach to interpretation of abstract concepts, with the result that complex mathematical forms are mirrored in convoluted literary interpretations that contribute absolutely nothing to science or to overall understanding.

Now in either case, you suggest that the mathematical results are not "good enough," and we need a greater conceptual understanding that the working physicist apparently is not capable of. I can appreciate such an idealistic view, but in the real world, can you cite one example of where a conceptual result from the philosophy of science has been used to develop a more rigorous mathematical exposition? I'm sure the physicist would have given due credit to the philosophy that guided his work.

[Bilbo]

though I consider myself a tourist in the realm of mathematics, I'd say Godel, Leibniz, Russell, Hilbert were "philosophers of science" who made substantial contributions to many mathematical concepts... Note that many philosophers of science throughout the ages have also attained terminal education in physics, chemistry, math, whatever.

Personally, I find the the philosophy of science to raise interesting and relevant questions every day

[Reality Apologist]

Ok, now that the semester is over, I can finally add something to this conversation. Let's see.

Originally Posted by Zip

I only have a few minutes at the moment, but I fully intend to return to this discussion today or tomorrow. In so far as whether I am qualified to comment or have some idea of what you do, the history and philosophy of science department at my university has been consistently evaluated as one of the top five if not best*, and this is reflected in the culture here and the courses I've taken.

Ah, you're at Pittsburgh? That explains a lot, actually! My department is very highly ranked in philosophy of science (and generally) as well, and I'm not doubting that your philosophical education has been high-quality; I just think you're wrong about some of this stuff.

Originally Posted by Zip

Maybe it is the case that much of the serious work in your field goes unappreciated because of poor quality, populist work by authors like Chopra, but notwithstanding, you suggest that working physicists know the mathematics but have a poor conceptual understanding of the empirical work they do, and I don't think that this is the case at all.

Some do and some don't. Some working physicists have very well thought-out opinions about this stuff, and some really don't care about interpretation at all, though I think that position is (thankfully) slowly dying out. 15 years ago, asking the kind of questions that I'm interested in (e.g. "how do we make
sense of the measurement problem?") was a recipe for ending your career as a physicist--there was a wide-spread intellectual allergy to conceptual questions. Richard Feynman, probably the best candidate for a "spokesman" of the last generation of physicists, was famously derisive of philosophy of science, and had little interest in conceptual questions. That is, as I said, starting to change: if I had to pick a spokesman today, I'd probably go with Brian Greene, and he's far more friendly to the foundational enterprise.

Originally Posted by Zip

Before you suggest that I've taken your remarks out of context, let me clarify. On the one hand you have researchers like Albert and Feynman, who have produced some good work that presents abstract concepts from modern physics in an informal yet accessible manner. Even Whitehead's process philosophy, abstract and non-secular as it was, contributed to a new, pragmatic understanding of the scientific method in medicine.

On the other hand, you have the majority of researchers in the philosophy of science today, who take a post-modernist approach to interpretation of abstract concepts, with the result that complex mathematical forms are mirrored in convoluted literary interpretations that contribute absolutely nothing to science or to overall understanding.

I think you have a distorted view of how common post-modernism is within philosophy of science. Most people who call themselves "philosophers of science"--at least if they're in mainstream departments--are not post-modernists. You're much more likely to find them in departments at smaller universities--departments with names like "Science and Technology Studies." Most philosophers of science that I've come into contact with have a good grasp of the actual science behind the work; this is particularly true, I think, in foundations of physics--people doing serious work generally have a strong background in both physics and mathematics. The best philosophers of physics--people like David Albert, Tim Maudlin, and David Wallace--often have degrees in physics and/or mathematics. Unfortunately, that kind of serious work doesn't capture public attention in the way that post-modern bullshit (or, in the case of people like Chopra, just plain bullshit). It's less flashy.

Originally Posted by Zip

Now in either case, you suggest that the mathematical results are not "good enough," and we need a greater conceptual understanding that the working physicist apparently is not capable of. I can appreciate such an idealistic view, but in the real world, can you cite one example of where a conceptual result from the philosophy of science has been used to develop a more rigorous mathematical exposition? I'm sure the physicist would have given due credit to the philosophy that guided his work.

There's clearly an interpretation problem. The mathematics are patently NOT good enough, because (in the case of quantum mechanics) the mathematics underdetermine the content of the theory. The Copenhagen Interpretation is clearly insufficient, and it's insufficient on philosophical (not mathematical) grounds. Philosophers have contributed to building a number of alternative interpretations--it's hard to point to specific cases, but it's hard to point to specific cases of ANYONE doing much by himself. Those kind of lone-gunman breakthroughs are rare in theoretical physics, as I'm sure you know. Here are a few cases, though:

David Wallace has given a formal mathematical proof that Everett's Interpretation can be made consistent with probability statements via a decision-theoretic application of Born's Rule.

Tim Maudlin has constructed an alternative topology based not on the open-set, but on the line as a primitive. That's a new one, and we'll see where it goes--there's a potential for quite a lot of development here.

David Albert has made a number of conceptual critiques (backed up by mathematics) on just about every foundational topic out there.

More generally, the sustained critique that philosophers have made on the existing interpretations of quantum mechanics has led to continued work in that area--like I said, the recognition that the Copenhagen Interpretation is clearly deficient has led to a lot of great work in both physics and the foundations of physics. Zurek's contributions to decoherence theory in particular come to mind as being a good result of this probing.

My point is not that scientists can't do philosophy: many of Einstein's greatest breakthroughs were philosophical--conceptual--in nature. The same is true of Schrodinger, Bohm, and many other figures in the history of modern theoretical physics. Physicists can think conceptually, but that also means that there's room for conceptual work to be done. Philosophers are trained to do conceptual work, and so are--at least sometimes--better equipped to get the job done. Of course that means they also need a background in physics (or whatever) if they want to contribute meaningfully; leaving room for conceptual work doesn't mean leaving room for armchair theorizing.