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PDF Book, Philosophy of Physics This content has been downloaded from IOPscience. Please scroll down to see the full text. Download details: IP Address: 170.106.34.90 This content was downloaded on 23/09/2021 at 15:07 Please note that terms and conditions apply. You may also be interested in: Physics as a useful tool for learning English Jesús Fidalgo and Juan Ramón Gallástegui Don't overlook the beauty in physics Leon Lederman Pregnancy and physics: can they mix? What is mathematical physics? Vladimir I Arnol'd Get set for The Physics Congress 2001 Philosophy of Physics Philosophy of Physics Robert P Crease Stony Brook University, New York, US IOP Publishing, Bristol, UK ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2017 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher, or as expressly permitted by law or under terms agreed with the appropriate rights organization. Multiple copying is permitted in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, the Copyright Clearance Centre and other reproduction rights organisations. Permission to make use of IOP Publishing content other than as set out above may be sought at [email protected]. Robert P Crease has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. ISBN 978-0-7503-1542-5 (ebook) DOI 10.1088/978-0-7503-1542-5 Version: 20171001 Physics World Discovery ISSN 2399-2891 (online) British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data: A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Published by IOP Publishing, wholly owned by The Institute of Physics, London IOP Publishing, Temple Circus, Temple Way, Bristol, BS1 6HG, UK US Office: IOP Publishing, Inc., 190 North Independence Mall West, Suite 601, Philadelphia, PA 19106, USA Contents Abstract vi Acknowledgments vii Author biography viii 1 Introduction 1 2 Background: Three traditions 2 Analytic 3 Pragmatic 3 Continental 4 3 Current Directions 5 What is fundamental physics? 5 What are time and space? 7 How to interpret quantum mechanics? 10 Is there a scientific method? 12 4 Outlook 18 Additional resources 18 v Abstract There are some physics controversies that no amount of physics research can answer. Why is doing string theory scientific despite its lack of empirical predictions? How should we interpret quantum mechanics? What is the nature of time and space? What constitutes fundamental physics? One can answer these questions dogmati- cally by appealing to textbooks or by making rough and ready pronouncements, but the issues behind them can often be significantly clarified by the sort of systematic, critical reflection that philosophy practices. Philosophy comes in several traditions. Three of these—known as ‘analytic,’‘pragmatic’ and ‘continental’—have paid particular attention to physics. This ebook illustrates philosophy of physics in action, and how it can help physics, by using four examples from physics to exhibit the aims and value of these philosophical approaches. vi Acknowledgments Many thanks to Edward S Casey, Matin Durrani, Joseph D Martin, and Robert C Scharff. I’d also like to express my continuing gratitude to Physics World for allowing me to write the ‘Critical Point’ column for nearly 18 years. In that column, I have addressed many different topics including philosophy of science. This book includes material from several of these columns, including: ‘Moving the goalposts’ (January 2014), ‘From wrong to right’ (October 2015), ‘A timely matter’ (January 2016), ‘Making space’ (September 2017), and ‘What philosophers do’ (November 2017). I’ve also borrowed passages from my review of Patrick Heelan’s book The Observable,inPhysics in Perspective (2016 18:1 148). vii Author biography Robert P Crease Robert P Crease is a professor in and chair of the Department of Philosophy at Stony Brook University, New York. He has written, translated, or edited over a dozen books on the history and philosophy of science and technology. He is past chair of the Forum for History of Physics of the American Physical Society. He is Co-editor-in-chief of Physics in Perspective, and for 17 years he has written a column, ‘Critical Point’, on the historical, social, and philosophical dimensions of science for Physics World. His books include The Quantum Moment: How Planck, Bohr, Einstein, and Heisenberg Taught Us to Love Uncertainty (with Alfred S Goldhaber, Norton 2014); World in the Balance: The Historic Quest for an Absolute System of Measurement (Norton 2011); The Great Equations: Breakthroughs in Science from Pythagoras to Heisenberg (Norton 2009); The Prism and the Pendulum: The Ten Most Beautiful Experiments in Science (Random House 2003); Making Physics: A Biography of Brookhaven National Laboratory, 1946–1972 (University of Chicago Press 1999); The Play of Nature: Experimentation as Performance (Indiana University Press 1993); and The Second Creation: Makers of the Revolution in 20th Century Physics (with Charles C Mann, Macmillan 1986). His website is robertpcrease.com. viii Physics World Discovery Philosophy of Physics Robert P Crease 1 Introduction Physicists face an array of different kinds of challenges. Some involve research— measuring a key parameter, elaborating a theory, or solving some other research puzzle. Other challenges have to do with securing equipment, materials or funding. Yet a third set of problems stems from questions that no amount of physics expertise or resources can make go away. Examples include the following: Why is doing string theory scientific despite its lack of empirical predictions? How to interpret quantum mechanics? What is the nature of time and space? What constitutes fundamental physics? Controversies about these and similar issues have recently riled not only physics but also affect how outsiders view the discipline. These kinds of controversies arise because physics is a highly complex activity made possible by inherited concepts and convictions that sometimes collide with each other or with developments or discoveries in a way that cannot be resolved by more laboratory research. These clashes can often be handled in a rough and ready practical way by scientists, but the issues behind them also can often be significantly clarified by critical reflection. Because philosophy is the systematic process of critical reflection, this kind of controversy is a place where physics and philosophy overlap, so we can call this third category of issues ‘philosophical challenges’. Examining a few such philosophical challenges is a good way to illustrate what philosophy of physics is about, and its value for physicists. To get an idea of how this overlap can happen, think of the realm of physics as like a giant workshop, a specialized and regulated environment where it is possible to create and study things and events—Higgs bosons, rare isotopes, superfluids— that do not appear, or appear crudely and rarely, in the surrounding world. Inside the workshop, we can be in near-complete control of the things and events we stage to try to understand ‘the complicated array of moving things’, as Richard Feynman says at the beginning of his lectures on physics. Inside the workshop, we can make sure that the results are general and do not depend on features of the world outside. doi:10.1088/978-0-7503-1542-5ch1 1 ª IOP Publishing Ltd 2017 Philosophy of Physics Inside the workshop, researchers can put questions to nature, in Galileo’s words, or question it like a court witness, in Immanuel Kant’s. Nature is silent to those who would understand it unless it is probed. But there are no blank or formless questions; questions are always ‘from somewhere’, given specific form by the particular inherited concepts and practices that make meaningful both the questions and the responses. This inheritance consists of certain fundamental and generally unques- tioned assumptions about matters taken for granted in the scientific quest for knowledge. Questions arise when mismatches occur between what is found in the world and physicists’ expectations, and the answers may call into doubt aspects of the inheritance. Physics grows by answers that modify the workshop traditions—by the introduction of new concepts, such as the Higgs field, that change the tradition— or by seeking out and discovering some piece of evidence that the tradition says should be there: the Higgs field itself. Philosophers of physics—and to some degree, all philosophers of science, though I will focus here only on philosophers of physics—are interested in the interactive activity of the workshop. But philosophers pay attention to this process differently than physicists do. I’ll ignore the ignorant and half-witted remarks about philosophy that I’ve encountered by physicists who should have known better, and get right to it: philosophers seek to understand, not what physicists know, but how they know it. They study the back-and-forth cycle of interpretation and inquiry, which they call ‘the hermeneutic circle’, in a technical way. Philosophers investigate matters taken for granted in the workshop, such as the role of the tradition, different manners of questioning, the changing practices and assumptions of those who question, the nature of inquiry, and the way of life that finds it important to inquire into nature. This makes for enormous differences between physics and philosophy, and means that physics and philosophy of physics have different concepts, methods, standards, interests and literature. It also ensures that philosophy of physics is as alive, relevant and as full of active questions as physics itself. There is a danger that philosophers may try to make the workshop interactions fit a single image or model. They may fall victim to the temptation, for instance, to try to capture what is happening in the workshop in terms of a characterization like ‘realism’ or ‘instrumentalism’ or ‘nominalism’ or ‘idealism’, and then try to shoe- horn what they see of workshop activity into it.
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