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Old 25th November 2012, 12:57 PM   #102
marplots
Penultimate Amazing
 
Join Date: Feb 2006
Posts: 29,167
Originally Posted by dafydd View Post
No, the discoveries of Micheal Faraday had noting to do with philosophy, that is the point. Let me try again. Which philosophers needed to have existed in order for Faraday to make his discoveries?
I can't think of one. But again, the same thing works as well if I ask which physicist had to exist for me to raise sheep. Physics isn't derived from philosophy (since, I believe we have excluded the early blending of "natural philosopher").

Isn't physics just an attempt to marry mathematics with reality and collect facts about the world? That's hardly captures philosophy at all. Sure, some philosophers critique and expound on science. Here's an example of a paper addressing problems in confirmation theory: http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/8544...nfirmation.pdf

In that instance, we have a philosopher trying to clarify how a scientific theory can be confirmed and what it means to be confirmed in the first place.

Sometimes physicists also dip into philosophy, as when they argue about different models with equivalent evidences. They puzzle about how to interpret results from quantum theory (the famous Copenhagen interpretation vs other ideas) or they wonder if symmetry is a necessary principle or exactly how cause and effect works. The meaning of time is another subject that can often have physicists waxing, if not philosophic, at least poetic. Here's an example of the marriage: http://www.amazon.com/gp/search?inde...rds=0521664454

But I am not a physicist. We should ask one directly.
James Lloyd wrote an interesting article about it for Scientific American: http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/...tell-the-tale/
Quote:
Given that science and philosophy are so intertwined, I sometimes wonder why I was skeptical about philosophy. Maybe I bought into the cliché of philosophers as aloof types who pontificate about the nature of a chair. Maybe I was just put off by all the long words.
What we have in this thread seems to be a battle of caricatures, rather than anything to do with how physics or philosophy is actually practiced.
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