Physics and Philosophy
The history of physics and philosophy is a troubled one. Some very eminent physicists have expressed their disdain for philosophy. For example, in 2012, the great physicist Stephen Hawking remarked:
“[…] philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” [1]
Others have been more explicit in their contempt, like the influential physicist and mathematician Freeman Dyson, who wrote:
“When and why did philosophy lose its bite? How did it become a toothless relic of past glories? […] Compared with the giants of the past, they [contemporary philosophers] are a sorry bunch of dwarfs. […] They are historically insignificant.” [2]
Then the Nobel Laureate Steven Weinberg once recounted:
“I’ve heard the remark (although I forget the source) that the philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” [3]
The quip is often attributed to the great physicist Richard Feynman.
Perhaps two developments happening in the last century can explain such an outlook. First, during the 1990s, the Science Wars erupted:
“Scientists then accused certain philosophers of having effectively rejected realism, objectivity, and rationality. They believed the scientific method, and even scientific knowledge, to be under siege. […] In one incident, called the Sokal hoax, physicist Alan Sokal got a nonsensical paper published in a journal of postmodern cultural studies. Already the grandiloquent title does not disappoint: ‘Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity.’ By flattering the editor’s ideology with nonsense that sounds scientific and meaningful, Sokal got his 35-page long article, with profuse citations, accepted for publication. […] Interestingly, modern physics has also suffered a similar embarrassment in 2002. Indeed, editors of scientific journals can just as easily succumb to imagining meaning where there is perhaps only empty jargon. The Bogdanov affair centers around the French twins and TV personalities Igor and Grichka Bogdanov. They enjoyed celebrity status and hosted a French science fiction television program. Today, they attract a lot of curiosity due to their physical appearance. What appears to be the result of extreme plastic surgery gives the twins an eerie extraterrestrial look: drastically pronounced chins, cheekbones, and lips. The Bogdanov affair was an academic dispute regarding the legitimacy of the work produced by the twins. This included a series of theoretical physics papers published in reputable, peer-reviewed scientific journals and their Ph.D. thesis, awarded by the University of Bourgogne in 2000. It was alleged that the contents were a meaningless combination of buzzwords, and the affair was covered in the mainstream media. The matter has also been referred to as the ‘reverse Sokal’ hoax. To this day, the Bogdanov twins have insisted upon the validity of their work, however, the controversy has prompted reflections upon the peer-review system.” [4]
The second development happened earlier with the rise of the importance of quantum mechanics. Suddenly physicists saw themselves forced to ponder philosophical issues. The understanding of the weird quantum behaviors demanded an interpretation. As this was increasingly seen as a futile undertaking — indeed, to this day, the proposed interpretations of quantum physics are wildly inconclusive and contradictory — physicists took an ever more pragmatic approach, and philosophy was deemed unnecessary baggage for any theory of the world. The mathematical framework simply works and churns out predictions for the behavior of the quantum world, which have never been wrong.
This development led to the rallying cry, “shut up and calculate!” [5] Why bother with pesky philosophical mind games if the mathematics of quantum mechanics allows the theory to develop and mature? The physicist and philosopher Mainard Kuhlmann summarizes:
“They [the shut-up-and-calculate physicists] contend that purely philosophical considerations on ontology are fruitlessly speculative and ill-founded and have no value in the light of ‘real scientific findings’” [6]
However, an implicit metaphysical belief is implied, namely instrumentalism. Kuhlmann continues:
“For many physicists, that is enough. They adopt a so-called instrumentalist attitude: they deny that scientific theories are meant to represent the world in the first place. For them, theories are only instruments for making experimental predictions. Still, most scientists have the strong intuition that their theories do depict at least some aspects of nature as it is before we make a measurement. After all, why else do science, if not to understand the world?” [7]
Regarding quantum physics, the instrumentalist interpretation is:
[…] more a mindset than an interpretation, given that it denies that any interpretation of quantum mechanics is necessary. It is a tradition advocated, in the words of [the philosopher of science Karl] Popper, by physicists who have turned away from interpretations of quantum mechanics ‘because they regard them, rightly, as philosophical, and because they believe, wrongly, that philosophical discussions are unimportant for physics.’” [8]
In the spectacular wake of the quantum revolution — transforming the world forever by unlocking the computational capacity of the universe — who could really argue? Only today, faced with the deep explanatory crisis of fundamental physics, the profound mystery of emergence, and the taunting quantum experiments continually challenging scientific realism, physicists are slowly reconsidering. Adding to these existential problems are the unsuccessful analyses of the elusive nature of consciousness in the philosophy of mind. Very unexpectedly, it appears that after over three centuries of unprecedented success, physics is grinding to a halt. If reality is seen as a box, physics has successfully understood most of the contents. However, it fails to comprehend the box’s walls in all directions. In other words, modern physics, in its current form, fails when faced with fundamental aspects of existence.
It is quite conceivable that philosophy is the Achilles heel of physics. By unquestioningly, uncritically, and compulsively adopting physicalism and reductionism, we now have hit a dead end in our understanding of the foundations of reality. Indeed, most scientists are even unaware of this metaphysical base of choice. So perhaps it is now finally time for physicists to fully embrace philosophy and explore increasingly more demanding and exotic metaphysics. Especially as the tides have turned, letting the physicists’ criticism of philosophy appear ignorant, as observed by the physicist Adam Becker in his 2018 book “What Is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics:”
“Part of the problem is that physicists generally don’t know much about philosophy. There is a massive asymmetry between the two fields: while philosophers usually take physics very seriously indeed — philosophers of physics are mathematically conversant in physics and often have advanced degrees in both fields — physicists are rarely trained in philosophy at all.” [9]
We are in a truly peculiar situation. While physics became ever more abstract and sophisticated, metaphysics has been in stasis. Anything unintuitive is met with the reaction, “no, that’s just New Age woo.” While there is always merit in being skeptical, shouldn’t we slowly be learning to explore alternate concepts of reality without instantly rejecting anything unfamiliar or falling prey to charlatans who try and exploit this situation for their personal gain? Perhaps Hawking should have correctly said:
“Naïve metaphysics is dead. Physics has not kept up with modern developments in philosophy, particularly the philosophy of mind. Scientists and philosophers should become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”
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Notes:
[1] Quoted from (S. Hawking and L. Mlodinow, 2012, p. 5).
[2] Quoted from (F. Dyson, 2012).
[3] Quoted from (S. Weinberg, 1987, p. 433).
[4] Quoted from (J.B. Glattfelder, 2019a, p. 307).
[5] See (N.D. Mermin, 2004) on the possible origins of the phrase.
[6] Quoted from (M. Kuhlmann, 2010, p. 186).
[7] Quoted from (M. Kuhlmann, 2013).
[8] Quoted from (M. Epperson, 2004, p. 32).
[9] Quoted from (A. Becker, 2018, p. 272). I can attest to this claim, as I was never exposed to any philosophical thinking while studying theoretical physics. Only during my Ph.D. on complex systems I voluntarily took a course on the philosophy of science. This not only opened my eyes but also made me wonder about the recklessness of shielding the young minds of physicists from such areas of investigation and ways of thinking.
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The above is an excerpt from Chapter 2 of a book on the fundamental nature of reality and consciousness, which I am currently writing. See this post for more information.
