This takes me to another point, which is, Should a scientist think about philosophy or not? It’s the fashion today to discard philosophy, to say now that we have science, we don’t need philosophy. I find this attitude naïve, for two reasons. One is historical. Just look back. Heisenberg would have never done quantum mechanics without being full of philosophy. Einstein would have never done relativity without having read all the philosophers and having a head full of philosophy. Galileo would never have done what he did without having a head full of Plato. Newton thought of himself as a philosopher and started by discussing this with Descartes and had strong philosophical ideas.
Even Maxwell, Boltzmann—all the major steps of science in the past were done by people who were very aware of methodological, fundamental, even metaphysical questions being posed. When Heisenberg does quantum mechanics, he is in a completely philosophical frame of mind. He says that in classical mechanics there’s something philosophically wrong, there’s not enough emphasis on empiricism. It is exactly this philosophical reading that allows him to construct that fantastically new physical theory, quantum mechanics.
Anaximander
An excellent piece by a theoretical physicist on the proper structure of scientific thought (and philosophy).
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Just this morning, Dennis Prager had on Stephen Meyer, Philosopher of Science Ph.D (Cambridge) to talk about his new book "Darwin's Doubt". I like that you can apparently still get a degree like that.
Also, OT, did you know that Oxford is older than the Aztec Empire?
A lot older, since the Aztec Empire stopped. They only lasted about a hundred years.
In that sense, Oxford is older than the Roman Empire. But I suppose you meant strictly that Oxford dates to the High Middle Ages, and the Aztecs only to the fifteenth century.
Heisenberg really put the inequality into the equality pie, with his Uncertainty Principle.
No, you can't have it all, and no, equality is not a good solution to not having it all.
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