[FRIAM] The Role of Philosophy in Physics

Wed Apr 15 13:38:30 EDT 2020

Soooo, Steve.  What IS the role of philosophy in physics? 

N

Nicholas Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
Clark University
ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of Steven A Smith
Sent: Wednesday, April 15, 2020 9:10 AM
To: friam at redfish.com
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] anthropological observations

Frank -
> I may have mentioned this before but physicists, chemists, engineers 
> etc. rarely talk about philosophy of science.  Social scientists, 
> particularly.psychologists, do much more.  Some mathematicians do 
> because they believe they are dealing with God.

My undergrad career in Physics turned a corner when I took an opportunity in an upper division class to write an essay on the "role of Philosophy in Physics".   The professor had asked for an essay on "the topic of your choice" because he said that it was important for hard scientists to be able to ask critical questions about the topics they were studying and to communicate them clearly, not just derive and solve equations.  

We were a small cadre of upper-class physics majors and a few grad students from other disciplines... perhaps a dozen or less?  There was no graduate program in Physics at my university (though there was in Chemistry, Biology, Geology...) and I think the core professors were frustrated or hungry for more stimulating experiences with students than the usual undergrad context offered. 

I was mildly worried that my subject was going to be dismissed as off-topic, as the other students unrolled their deepish-dives into specific questions in Physics.  My classmates did "roll their eyes" a little when I announced my topic and started in.   The professor, however, who had been rather critical of/hard on me up to that point in this and other classes, interrupted me to ask penetrating questions, and soon the rest of the class was nodding their heads in appreciation or at least understanding.  I can't remember the full arc of my essay but I remember in particular presenting things like Zeno's paradox to  discuss ideas such as atomicity and the different interpretations of quantum theory and the larger implications of relativity.  

This experience melted the ice with that professor who had been critical of my work-style for many semesters.  I rarely wrote down *every* step in my derivations (meaning I would balance more than one element of an equation in a single step) and I rarely did *all* the assigned homework problems (Once I felt I understood a concept, I would skip the remaining problems and go to the next conceptually different problem... and I was running my own business and had a young child by then and had no patience for what felt like "make-work").  My weak "performance" in the mundane tasks of homework balanced against my above-average performance on tests (where I forced myself to write down every step and do every
problem) made me a pretty solid B student while most of the others in my cohort were over-achievers trying to nail a 4.0 grade average.  

At the end of that class, the professor (notoriously hard-nosed) offered me an independent study class the next semester which allowed me to rush through a medley of advanced topics that were not offered as formal classes.  I dearly enjoyed his reading assignments and the two hours of discussion each week, we covered a LOT of ground that last semester. It wasn't my first A in a Physics class but it WAS my first in one of HIS classes!  It was also a great preparation for working at LANL where I encountered esoteric topics on a very regular basis.

It might be noted that my second-most favorite course of study and other favorite professor was in Philosophy...  a professor and domain of study that taught me how to think about ideas, not just about "things" which seemed to be what *all* of the engineering classes I took and *most* of the science classes I took were about.  This is where I was first made aware that a grand unified theory of everything was an oxymoron, why some physical phenomena could *appear* to move faster than light-speed (e.g. two quasar-beams crossing in intergalactic space), and an intuitive framing of Godel's work in incompleteness, etc before I encountered it in CS.   

- Steve

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