{"id":3387,"date":"2012-11-28T15:49:02","date_gmt":"2012-11-28T14:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=3387"},"modified":"2012-11-28T15:49:02","modified_gmt":"2012-11-28T14:49:02","slug":"steven-weinberg-against-philosophy-from-dreams-of-a-final-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2012\/11\/steven-weinberg-against-philosophy-from-dreams-of-a-final-theory\/","title":{"rendered":"Steven Weinberg: \u201cAgainst Philosophy\u201d (from \u201cDreams of a Final Theory\u201d)."},"content":{"rendered":"

Steven Weinberg \u201cAgainst Philosophy\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

Great text. The beginning:<\/p>\n

Physicists get so much help from subjective and often vague aesthetic judgments that it might be
\nexpected that we would be helped also by philosophy, out of which after all our science evolved.
\nCan philosophy give us any guidance toward a final theory? The value today of philosophy to
\nphysics seems to me to be something like the value of early nation-states to their peoples. It is only
\na small exaggeration to say that, until the introduction of the post office, the chief service of nation-
\nstates was to protect their peoples from other nation-states. The insights of philosophers have
\noccasionally benefited physicists, but generally in a negative fashion\u2014by protecting them from the
\npreconceptions of other philosophers. I do not want to draw the lesson here that physics is best done
\nwithout preconceptions. At any one moment there are so many things that might be done, so many
\naccepted principles that might be challenged, that without some guidance from our preconceptions
\none could do nothing at all. It is just that philosophical principles have not generally provided us
\nwith the right preconceptions. In our hunt for the final theory, physicists are more like hounds than
\nhawks; we have become good at sniffing around on the ground for traces of the beauty we expect in
\nthe laws of nature, but we do not seem to be able to see the path to the truth from the heights of
\nphilosophy. Physicists do of course carry around with them a working philosophy. For most of us, it
\nis a rough-and-ready realism, a belief in the objective reality of the ingredients of our scientific
\ntheories. But this has been learned through the experience of scientific research and rarely from the
\nteachings of philosophers. This is not to deny all value to philosophy, much of which has nothing to
\ndo with science. I do not even mean to deny all value to the philosophy of science, which at its best
\nseems to me a pleasing gloss on the history and discoveries of science. But we should not expect it
\nto provide today’s scientists with any useful guidance about how to go about their work or about
\nwhat they are likely to find. I should acknowledge that this is understood by many of the
\nphilosophers themselves. After surveying three decades of professional writings in the philosophy
\nof science, the philosopher George Gale concludes that “these almost arcane discussions, verging on
\nthe scholastic, could have interested only the smallest number of practicing scientists.” Wittgenstein
\nremarked that “nothing seems to me less likely than that a scientist or mathematician who reads me
\nshould be seriously influenced in the way he works.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Steven Weinberg \u201cAgainst Philosophy\u201d Great text. The beginning: Physicists get so much help from subjective and often vague aesthetic judgments that it might be expected that we would be helped also by philosophy, out of which after all our science evolved. Can philosophy give us any guidance toward a final theory? The value today of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1673],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3387","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-meta","category-science-philosophy","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3387"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3389,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3387\/revisions\/3389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3387"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3387"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3387"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}