[Last week we had a terrific discussion on the relationship between Physics and Metaphysics. Meanwhile, we asked the distinguished philosopher of physics, Steve French, to reformulate one of his more programmatic statements to the discussion as a free standing blog post for Newapps; we are pleased he agreed.--ES]
When it comes to how much physics, or science in general, we need to know to ground our philosophy, there's a sense in which *none* of us know enough. I've been to conferences where folk I regard as some of the very best philosophers of physics in the world have been treated with, at best condescension, at worst, open contempt by (in one case, Nobel prize winning) physicists.
We can never learn as much physics as the physicists because we have to learn philosophy as well and as Jason Turner has pointed out, we have lives, families, comics to buy, ambient doom metal to listen to ... So we learn enough to get a grip on the issues and say what we want to say, knowing of course that as in every area of philosophy, there's always a good chance that someone will come along with a 'I think you'll find ...' referee's report/review/discussion note.
*But* what lay behind that opening chapter of Ladyman and Ross, I think, was the sense of frustration with certain colleagues, some of them esteemed colleagues, who haven't seemed to even make the effort to drag their knowledge past Newton, much less into the 20th century and yet seemed to think they knew enough to make the sort of pronouncements about how the world is that L&R cite.
Having said that, I am uncomfortable with the insistence that all metaphysics should be grounded in or touch base with current physics.
I think excellent metaphysics has been and is being done without paying due attention or any attention to current physics and I don't see why someone couldn't say 'hey, I'm looking at the metaphysics of everyday objects, or statues and lumps of clay, or the possible dependence relations between objects that bear little or no resemblance to any members of the elementary particle zoo ...' (as long as they don;t insist (or at least not without some very careful argument) that their physics free metaphysics somehow describes how the physical/micro-/ world is).
After all, we 'allow' pure mathematicians to explore topics that appear not to be applicable at all (keeps 'em quiet and off the streets). Indeed, Kerry McKenzie (again) has explored the analogy between physics free metaphysics and pure maths in a recent talk (in Toronto I think) and extended the analogy to the heuristic role that Redhead famously assigned to surplus mathematical structure. And its in that physics-free 'surplus' metaphysics that one can find interesting and potentially useful moves and strategies, and where the likes of me can go a-Viking!
Of course I appreciate that the relationship between pure and applied maths is often more complex than certain 'mystery mongerers' (such as Steiner in The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, Harvard U press 1998) contend, in that, in certain cases at least, you have a kind of entwining of 'pure' and 'applied' developments, as in the case of the group theory and quantum mechanics in the 1920s.
And I think it would be fruitful to have an analogous entwining between metaphysics and philosophy of physics so that you have at one end of some kind of 'spectrum' philosophers of physics 'appropriating' and applying metaphysical manoeuvres, at the other end, 'pure' metaphysicians doing their funky thing and in between a whole bunch of us throwing moves and concepts back and forth, adapting them to the physics, generating new ones from the physics but then sharpening and refining them in a metaphysical context, but most importantly, talking to one another and exchanging ideas and having the kind of conversation that sometimes, but often too rarely, happens in seminars and reading groups or even in the corridor.
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