[FRIAM] The Role of Philosophy in Physics

[Prof David West]

Not Steve, but when it comes to Quantum Physics the relationship is "Shut up and calculate." 

davew


On Wed, Apr 15, 2020, at 12:38 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> 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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