= 27d567bc2d48d9f40e9ccc20ea370b15)
shminux comments on Scientist vs. philosopher on conceptual analysis - Less Wrong
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
= 783df68a0f980790206b9ea87794c5b6)
Loading…= b715d02e85f7b3b4ae65ca3d3e450868)
Subscribe to RSS Feed
Powered by Reddit
= f037147d6e6c911a85753b9abdedda8d)
You are viewing a comment permalink. View the original post to see all comments and the full post content.
Comments (24)
The situation reminds me of the relationship between math and physics. When the necessary mathematical tools are missing, physicists invent the crude new ones to "just get it done", rather than wait for the math to catch up. Then the mathematicians swoop in and refine, polish, beautify and admire them, and scoff at the ugly earlier implements.
Some notable examples that come to mind are calculus, conservation laws, Dirac's delta and bra-ket notation in quantum mechanics, path integrals, renormalization.
Lest some overzealous reader misunderstands my point, I do not intend to badmouth math and mathematicians. The elegant new tools often lead to better understanding of the underlying physical phenomena and consequently new discoveries in physics. The same can rarely be said of philosophy.
Calculus is not a fair example, because the disciplines of mathematics and physics were not separated at the time; the work of Newton and Leibniz was the best "mathematics" (as well as "physics") of the era. Noether's theorem is not an example at all but a counterexample: a mathematical theorem, proved by a mathematician, that provided new insights into physics.
Dirac's delta and Feynman path integrals are fair examples of your point.
I concede the calculus point on a technicality :). Certainly there was no clear math/physics separation at the time (and the term physics as currently understood didn't even exist), but the drive to develop the math necessary to solve real-life problems was certainly there, and separate from the drive to do pure mathematics. And it took a long time before the d/dx notation was properly formalized.
As for the Noether's theorem, it was inspired by Einstein proving the energy-momentum tensor conservation in General Relativity, without realizing that it was a special case of a very general principle.
Except that the problems in question (explaining the motion of the planets and so on) would not have been considered "real-life problems" back then; rather, they would have been considered "abstract philosophical speculations" that would have carried the same kind of stigma among "practical men" that "pure mathematics" does today.
I think you mean "justified"; if there was one thing Leibniz was good at, it was formalizing!
According to your Wikipedia link, it represented the solution to a physical problem in its own right: a paradox wherein conservation appeared to be violated in GR.