From: Spudboy100@aol.com
Date: Wed Apr 10 2002 - 01:07:18 MDT
This a a poll of "What's Real?" My question to you, fellow Extropian
philosophers is how does this survey, match up with your own views?
http://physicsweb.org/article/world/15/4/2
<<Why philosophy shouldn't be avoided
I've often heard scientists call philosophical attention to their field
irrelevant at best, and confusing and destructive at worst. Indeed, many
scientists advise that philosophy should be avoided altogether. Steven
Weinberg, for example, named a chapter in his book Dreams of a Final Theory
"Against the philosophers". Murray Gell-Mann, meanwhile, has remarked that
philosophy "muddies the waters and obscures [the theoretical physicist's]
principal task, which is to find a coherent structure that works". He then
added that having a philosophical bias may cause a physicist "to reject a
good idea".
But such reactions misconstrue philosophy, however much they may have been
triggered by the excesses of philosophers themselves. Scientists cannot avoid
making judgements about what is real and what is not, and philosophical
analysis seeks to expose and clarify this process. I've also heard that
science inclines its practitioners towards a specific philosophical position.
Scientists, it is said, tend towards realism because it makes them better
scientists - a conviction that has also influenced philosophers.
When Ian Hacking, for example, once asked a physics colleague what he was
doing, the physicist replied that he was "spraying photons". Impressed,
Hacking wrote: "From that day forth I've been a scientific realist. As far as
I'm concerned, if you can spray them, then they are real." In his book Faith,
Science and Understanding, physicist-turned-Anglican-priest John Polkinghorne
remarked that "virtually all scientists" - including himself - adhere to a
brand of realism known as critical realism.
A reviewer in Physics World, who doubted Polkinghorne's bold assertion, later
suggested that I poll readers, hoping to elicit information to settle the
issue. I therefore carried out a survey in which I listed a number of
different items and asked readers to say whether or not they considered them
to be real things, or whether they were unsure (Physics World October 2001
p18). Having received more than 500 replies, the statistics (see tables) do
indeed cast doubt on Polkinghorne's claim. >>
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