Posted by
Bruce Sherwood on
Jul 12, 2011; 12:09am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Philosophy-vs-science-tp6573103p6573234.html
Without reading the paper, I can offer one way in which academic
physics is exactly like the description of academic philosophy offered
in earlier postings, namely that much research and scholarship are
tweaks on prior work.
Some years ago at a workshop we gave for physics faculty about our
intro physics curriculum, we explained that we were trying to make our
course more authentic to the activities of actual living contemporary
physicists, namely that they take some fundamental principles as
given, model complex situations on the basis of these principles by
making approximations, simplifying assumptions, idealizations, etc.,
and compare behavior of the models with observations. Seldom does any
physicist discover a new fundamental principle; most physicists apply
those principles that have proven durable.
A young physicist said, "Oh, thank you! I had been very confused about
the nature of the discipline! When I read my first physics journal
article, I was very puzzled to get to the end of the paper without
seeing any brand new physics. I thought that what physicists did was
discover new principles, not apply existing ones to new situations."
Bruce
On Mon, Jul 11, 2011 at 5:02 PM, glen e. p. ropella
<
[hidden email]> wrote:
>
> I'm curious to know what the "philosophy is very different from science"
> camp thinks of this paper:
>
>
http://phil.elte.hu/leszabo/Preprints/MG-LESz-rp_preprint-v5.pdf>
> It's not a rhetorical question. I don't understand that paper or the
> physics or math being discussed ... at least not to my satisfaction.
> But it would be interesting to use the contents of this paper to find
> out _why_ you think philosophy is so different from so much of what we
> (perhaps mistakenly) call "science".
>
> --
> glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095,
http://tempusdictum.com>
>
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