Steve Hsu pulls out a provocative quote from philosopher of science Paul Feyerabend:
The withdrawal of philosophy into a “professional” shell of its own has had disastrous consequences. The younger generation of physicists, the Feynmans, the Schwingers, etc., may be very bright; they may be more intelligent than their predecessors, than Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Boltzmann, Mach and so on. But they are uncivilized savages, they lack in philosophical depth — and this is the fault of the very same idea of professionalism which you are now defending.
It’s probably true that the post-WWII generations of leading physicists were less broadly educated than their pre-war counterparts (although there are certainly counterexamples such as Murray Gell-Mann and Steven Weinberg). The simplest explanation for this phenomenon would be that the center of gravity of scientific research switched from Europe to America after the war, and the value of a broad-based education (and philosophy in particular) has always been less in America. Interestingly, Feyerabend seems to be blaming philosophers themselves — “the withdrawal of philosophy into a `professional’ shell” — rather than physicists or any wider geosocial trends.
But aside from whether modern physicists (and maybe scientists in other fields, I don’t know) pay less attention to philosophy these days, and aside from why that might be the case, there is still the question: does it matter? Would knowing more philosophy have made any of the post-WWII giants better physicists? There are certainly historical counterexamples one could conjure up: the acceptance of atomic theory in the German-speaking world in the late nineteenth century was held back considerably by Ernst Mach‘s philosophical arguments. On the other hand, Einstein and Bohr and their contemporaries did manage to do some revolutionary things; relativity and quantum mechanics were more earth-shattering than anything that has come since in physics.
The usual explanation is that the revolutionary breakthroughs simply haven’t been there to be made — that Feynman and Schwinger and friends missed the glory days when quantum mechanics was being invented, so it was left to them to move the existing paradigm forward, not to come up with something revolutionary and new. Maybe, had these folks been more conversant with their Hume and Kant and Wittgenstein, we would have quantum gravity figured out by now.
Probably not. Philosophical presuppositions certainly play an important role in how scientists work, and it’s possible that a slightly more sophisticated set of presuppositions could give the working physicist a helping hand here and there. But based on thinking about the actual history, I don’t see how such sophistication could really have moved things forward. (And please don’t say, “If only scientists were more philosophically sophisticated, they would see that my point of view has been right all along!”) I tend to think that knowing something about philosophy — or for that matter literature or music or history — will make someone a more interesting person, but not necessarily a better physicist.
This might not be right, though. Maybe, had they been more broad and less technical, some of the great physicists of the last few decades would have made dramatic breakthroughs in a field like quantum information or complexity theory, rather than pushing harder at the narrow concerns of particle physics or condensed matter. Easy to speculate, hard to provide much compelling evidence either way.
I find it hard to believe that basic philosophical rigor wouldn’t help theoretical physics. One has to have a feel for whether or not the group of assumptions or presuppositions are logically consistent before building a theory on top of them.
I wouldn’t blame Mach for holding back atomic theory; but rather the lack of competing philosophers of science at the time.
I’m not convinced that Feyerabend meant that reading Hume would help one make breakthroughs in physics. What he’s complaining about is that physicists who only know physics are ‘uncivilized savages’: without the ugly colonial language, they’re stunted human beings who aren’t using a large part of their intelligence. The same is true, I’d say and I think Feyerabend would also say, of philosophers who only know philosophy. There’s more to life than physics. Indeed, there’s more to being a scientist than physics: there’s skeptical curiosity, and imagination, and joy in difficult thought, all of which are developed by doing philosophy.
Interesting entry – your first paragraph (after the quote) sounds almost verbatim like this very interesting digression by Lee Smolin for Canada’s CBC’s Ideas series: How to think about Science:
http://www.cbc.ca/ideas/features/science/index.html
Episode 23. I can only recommend it for a very interesting in-depth reflection about the importance of broader interests and philosophy in the progress of science. Lee Smolin rawks… 🙂
The influence of Mach on Einstein is fascinating, not least because it is so full of irony. Mach was unmoved by the analysis of Brownian motion, and had little use for special or general relativity. And yet, Julian Barbour has argued that general relativity is a nearly perfect realization of Mach’s principle in dynamics, or at least, a particular statement of the essential content of Mach’s principle.
(By the way, Mach was also Wolfgang Pauli’s godfather.)
A lot of physicists, especially those working on quantum foundations and non-string-theoretic approaches to quantum gravity, do say they find value in philosophy. And surely you have benefited from Huw Price’s work.
Ha, I also wanted to reference Smolin, but Carolune (#4) beat me to it. In his Trouble With Physics, Smolin makes quite a convincing case I think that, with different ways of thinking, we might indeed have developed different ideas by now and pushed the frontiers instead of having such a long period of consolidating. Plus, more or less, getting stuck. And Smolin quotes Feyerabend too, I remember.
Philosophical presuppositions don’t matter, except when they do.
Adopting the attitude “shut up and calculate” works, except when it doesn’t.
🙂
Also see the discussion in this post and the subsequent comments.
As someone who occasionally works on the foundations of quantum theory, I must say that I have found the philosophical literature in this area to be tremendously helpful in promoting clear thinking about things like the measurement problem and Bell’s theorem. It is one of the few areas where there is considerable interation between the scientific and philosophical communities, and where that interaction has definitely led to conceptual progress. Of course, many would argue about whether this is really science, but let’s not get into that right now.
Lately I have been thinking that a similar degree of interaction between the cosmology/strings community and philosophers could be very fruitful, especially with the whole landscape/anthropic principle/probability measures business. It is not simply a matter of having philosophers criticizing the whole idea of the program (although I am sure that would happen quite a lot), but more usefully they could analyze specific proposals in order to check whether thay are consistent and well-founded. I think it would be a good thing if these ideas were analyzed with the same sort of philosophical rigor that has been applied to Bell’s theorem for example.
It depends on how you look at this question. A subtle issue is why who works on what, where they get their ideas and inspiration, how they persevere in the face of difficulties, contraindications and so on. In this case, it’s possible that a training in philosophy, as much is it is a discipline that focuses on how one thinks about thinking, may provide utility on an individual or idiosyncratic basis. But then, I’m not sure that I would elevate it above any other source of inspiration, and it’s harder for me to imagine that any specific philosophical ideas, schools or thought, etc. would have any general objective usefulness, certainly not in any literal translation: philosophy -> physics.
Clearly, Feynman, who disdained philosophy, did just fine without it. He was also very clear about his sources of inspiration, and how he drew on his own talents for deep creative thought. At the same time, just as everyone talks with an accent, whether they think so or not, he clearly had an exceptionally strong philosophy of science that colored how he looked at the world…
As a former student of philosophy, I agree with Sean the study of philosophy can make anyone a more interesting person but not necessarily a better physicist. And the quote from Feyerabend demonstrates it won’t necessarily make you a better person either. I also agree that “professional” philosophy has withdrawn into a shell and alienated the general population, but I think it’s a shell of arrogance and not one of professionalism. Furthermore I find Feyerabend’s characterization of educated non-philosophers as “uncivilized savages” to be indicative of this very arrogance. If philosophy is ever to encourage non-philosophers to explore the field once again, it won’t be with language like this.
Philosophy is unavoidable in physics. Science is, essentially, the best epistemological method to date (not that I’m biased). I don’t think you’re becoming a “barbarian” if you don’t formally study philosophy (I always cringe whenever I read that term in philosophy), but studying philosophy, like mathematics, will help you become a better physicist because you will become a better thinker. And, hell, thinking is pretty frick-tastically sweet.
I am not sure one should be insulted to be called an *uncivilized savage* especially if one has imagination, a little leisure and an expression of intuition with out denting or shaving off the nose of a truth.
Europeans place more value than we do on wide-spread learning. Used to be that British businesses hired the English or History or Philosophy major, but I suspect that in recent years they have been emulating America and going for the MBA-types. Recall IBM hiring in the 1960s – any degree was acceptable but you needed some degree. It proved you had enough discipline to accomplish something – and they didn’t want someone uneducated to rise high the company and deal with upper-level types only to embarrass himself and IBM by his lack of education.
The chief sub-discipline of Philosophy that all scientists need is Logic, and it wouldn’t hurt the rest of the human race either. Generally, 5% think, the other 95% believe they think but don’t really have a clue.
Some schools are beginning to teach ‘life skills’, but I’ve never seen Thinking 101 and we need that even more. Am contemplating writing a book: Thinking for Dummies.
The profound truth about philosophy is that it is completely and utterly useless. In philosophy you can defend any stance you want and it doesn’t mean anything. It is just a terrible waste of time.
The few deep and useful insights about reality which can be achieved by reasoning alone you are very likely to develop anyway if you are smart without wasting time on philosophical studies.
This is why philosophers are so arrogant and alienated – at some point in their career they realize that philosophy is an empty talk, that their investigations are meaningless and that it’s Science not philosophy that allows one to discover fundamental truths about reality, this is also why many resent philosophers resent science.
What’s more some philosophical ideas can actually have negative impact on physics, one example is the lack of belief in objective reality which can make one naively reject the possibility of gaining further understanding of the system purely on philosophical ground. This is the case with Bohr and his absurd Copenhagen interpretation which have stood in the way of progress ever since it was developed. As a result QM is a mixture of very good ideas and complete nonsense.
Physicists certainly should have deep insight and understanding but this comes from studying foundations of physics and mathematics not philosophy which is useless.
How very Wittgensteinian, RPF.
I think that good physicists are generally willing to consider the ideas of anyone who actually cares about the problems that arise in physics, and has taken some trouble to carefully study the background of those problems. A number of scholars specializing in philosophy as a professional discipline over the past couple of centuries have indeed fit that description.
( “There are only two kinds of music, good and bad.” — Duke Ellington )
RPF — even if one can “defend any stance you want”, the mental discipline involved in actually carrying out the defense is indeed useful training, in much the same way that upper level abstract mathematics is (e.g. I don’t use group theory as an astronomer, but I learned a hell of a lot about how to think from setting up mathematical proofs while learning it.) Likewise for philosophy — in grad school I was friends with a pack of philosophers, and man alive, they were smaaaaart. Deadly rigorous in arguments, with a level of logical power that scientists tend to think that only they have. (They were primarily philosophers of language, which might lend itself more to this kind of thinking — I have no idea if the ‘what is truth” subset of the discipline is similar). Regardless, I don’t find this to be that distinct from theoretical particle physics, which spends 99% of its effort calculating the effects of theories that are not the actual laws of nature. Sure, once in a while you get lucky and predict the neutrino, but most of the models they’re exploring are not accurate representations of the real universe. However, they gain insight and develop new methodologies by carrying out those explorations, making them “useless, but worthwhile”.
From the perspective of a historian/philosopher of religion and philosophy, i would like to see more scientists (across the disciplines) express themselves and their research to a greater public, and to maximize their efforts they would benefit from philosophy coursework. The impact of science on philosophy has been monumental; philosophical rigor demands that philosophers engage the sciences as sources of objectifiable and verifiable givens. A solid, hermeneutically-whole philosophy requires the integration of physicists latest discoveries and the ongoing efforts of astronomers to understand the universe.
The profound truth about philosophy is that it is completely and utterly useless. In philosophy you can defend any stance you want and it doesn’t mean anything. It is just a terrible waste of time.
What a profoundly and staggeringly stupid three sentences…
And that from the crackpot who wrote, in Against Method:
Obviously, philosophy doesn’t even make you a better philosopher.
As to the “withdrawal” quote. That he trashes Feynman of all people for lacking in philosophical depth only goes to show what this kind of bigoted, condescending hagiography is: complete bullshit. If that’s what you mean by philosophy, then scientists, or indeed anyone, should pay no attention.
Philosophy teaches how to think well. Read Feynman’s The Meaning of It All, and you will instantly have improved your thinking. That’s applied philosophy for you. And it lasts. People still talk about Feynman everywhere you look. Feyerabend — well, not so much.
Julianne,
thanks for the very gracious and sensible reply to a comment that was all but gracious, honestly close to the dangerously ignorant. Yes, as a ‘philosopher’ (whatever that might be) I do take the issue a bit personally when it comes to statements like ‘we do useful cool stuff, while you are a bunch of wankers’. Our science did not pup out of the earth as a full-formed discipline, but its the product of millennia of intellectual development, big part of which ‘scientists’ did not even exist. The word itself was ‘invented’ by William Wheewell in the mid-1800s. Before that scientists were–guess what RPF–natural philosophers. Not knowing, or worse not even considering relevant this historical evolution, might not make you less competent in what you’ve been trained to do, but certainly will make you a less rigorous, conscious, open-minded and insightful scientist. And i believe these are traits of a great scientist.
In fact, I slightly resent this post from Sean, since—even if presented in a ‘neutral’ tone—this kind of polemics only end up fueling (as we see clearly from the comments here) this ‘two cultures’/’science wars’ attitude, which is only detrimental: both to philosophers and to scientists. If i may, I’d redirect you to a blogpost of mine, on this issue, written some weeks ago: http://hypertiling.wordpress.com/2009/06/03/restructuring-universities-and-the-two-cultures/
Bohr, Einstein, Schrodinger, Boltzmann and Mach all spoke German. Clearly later generations of physicists have been hobbled by their practice of thinking in English.
Feyerabend is clearly an idiot. I’ve never even heard of him.
The training a Philosophy student gets from constructing and presenting a viewpoint within a rigorously defined, consistent framework could be very useful when interpreting the results of calculations. Especially when it comes to describing non-intuitive phenomena, knowing the pitfalls, ambiguities and limitations of language could alert a theorist as to the way the interpretations are expressed.
I took a class in philosophy as an undergraduate. I have yet to utilize any concept or method learned there (other than rudimentary logic, which the greeks knew and every physicist in the world knows) a single time in my career as a physicist.
I challenge any physicist to lay down an example where his knowledge of some esoteric philosophy actually improved his work as a physicist in a way that wouldn’t be immediately obvious to a specialist without that acumen.
The only example I can think off, is probably Einstein’s obsession with Mach’s ideas during the formulation of GR. The irony is that it was the least well motivated part of that picture and is now known to be superflous (at least if phrased in the most obvious way).
“And yet, Julian Barbour has argued that general relativity is a nearly perfect realization of Mach’s principle in dynamics, or at least, a particular statement of the essential content of Mach’s principle.”
Yes, he has argued that. And, as usual, he’s wrong.
Re: Huw Price: he has indeed done excellent work, and has really made a contribution to our understanding of the Arrow of time. His work is a prime example of the kind of things that philosophers can do that would really be useful to physicists. On the other hand, *part* of the reason for his success is simply the fact that, not being a physicist, he is free of all the accumulated strata of quasi-sociological baloney that impede physicists who want to think about this issue. I recall Sean C. reporting on a talk he gave [was it at Santa Cruz? Sorry, I forget] where he was met with opposition that I can only describe as mind-boggling stupidity. It was based not on physics — the physics point being made, such as it was, was trivial — but on sociology-of-physics resentments [“you pointy-headed cosmologists think you know thermodynamics better than us?”]. All that junk could have no influence on somebody like Huw Price, because he would probably find it hard even to imagine. So philosophers might be useful simply because they are immune to all that sort of rubbish. [Of course, they have their own sociological problems….]