Physics and philosophy

Why is philosophy important to physics?

Sean Carroll describes in his book Something Deeply Hidden how research related to interpretations of quantum mechanics is perceived among physicists and university administrators. It turns out that it is not an effort that is appreciated or even respected, and it is not easy to obtain scientific grants for it.

This is, of course, a manifestation of the primitiveness and short-sightedness of that community, which believes that only what can be measured makes sense; what yields concrete, tangible effects; what can be expressed in the language of mathematics. "Philosophy is for dreamers who are too lazy to learn mathematics and apply it in practice," think many physicists, scorning philosophy.

Philosophy—understood broadly as the most general reflection on reality—is, however, absolutely necessary for the development of physics. This is taught by the history of the field, which physicists themselves seem to have forgotten. The best example of this is Albert Einstein, the most beautiful flower that physics has produced. Most of his greatest achievements did not result from him being a genius mathematician, a titan of work, or a great erudite. His strength was that he was willing to seriously consider possibilities that hadn't even occurred to others or seemed too absurd to devote time to.

Evidence of this is the fact that Einstein received the Nobel Prize only in 1921, and not for his greatest achievement—creating the theory of relativity—but for the discovery of the photoelectric effect in 1905. It took almost twenty years, and thus a generational change, for the mainstream of physics to accept even part of the breakthroughs made by Einstein. The reason was not, of course, a lack of agreement with experience or internal inconsistency or lack of elegance in his theory. It was simply a lack of agreement regarding the philosophical consequences of his theory.

In the case of the photoelectric effect, it was necessary to seriously consider the idea that light is quantized, even though for a very long time it had been taken for granted that light is a wave. The special theory of relativity required undermining the absolute status of time and space. The general theory of relativity required rejecting empty, passive, and static space, which had served only as a backdrop for the play performed by physical systems, and adopting the view that it has an internal, dynamic structure that participates in that play. In all these cases, we are not able to see these effects directly, but we must accept them because it follows from the agreement of the physical model with physical reality and the internal consistency and elegance of the model. It is not easy to accept something that cannot be directly perceived, that is completely counterintuitive and bizarre, even if all the data point to it.

Einstein was able to solve so many physical puzzles because he had (in addition to nonconformity and great intelligence) a fresh, unique perspective on physical reality, different from the common one. It allowed him to accept what was unacceptable to others. This perspective was, in turn, largely a result of his philosophical fascinations, mainly in the form of pantheism and the substantial monism of Baruch Spinoza, to which he openly admitted.

The rejection of philosophy—that is, the most general reflection on the world—is wrong precisely because only it allows us to look at physical reality from a completely new, fresh perspective, which is most likely necessary to solve current problems in the field of physics. Who knows, maybe all the elements are already in place for such a breakthrough today; we're just waiting for the emergence of a young physicist of Einstein's caliber, who will take deadly seriously a possibility that currently appears as complete absurdity or something unthinkable.

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