To me, this is a very odd reading of what philosophers do. Like mathematics, philosophy is about the implications of [or premises necessary to] believing that something is true, not about whether it is true or not. A philosopher might say, “Geez, Dr. Mach, what are the premises that lead to your assertion?” It might (or might not) then be shown that the premises are absurd or that they include the conclusion. In either case, we might be less inclined to believe Mach because of a philosophical argument, but not because “the only people qualified to be philosophers were physicists” has any factual basis. If for instance, you believe that “physics is the study of matter and its relations” and “everything that is real consists of matter and its relations” then you pretty much have to think that physicists are the people you need to go to answer questions about anything that is real. But somehow, I don’t think the next time your dog gets sick you are going to take him to a physicist. This is the kind of contradiction that a philosopher can work over and a physicist will have little to contribute to, unless he also happens to be a philosopher.
Another way of saying this, perhaps, is to simply say that Einstein and Mach were engaging in arrogant twaddle. Nick From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Prof David West Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 4:29 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris Einstein and Mach (and many others in the Physics community) used to say that the only people qualified to be philosophers were physicists. This is not so different and almost certainly shares the same premise that only Physicists really understood Reality. davew On Thu, 07 Jul 2011 16:21 -0400, "Nicholas Thompson" <nickthomp...@earthlink.net> wrote: Isn’t that like saying that mathematics is dead because [some] mathematicians haven’t kept up with modern … um… astrophysics? N From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Owen Densmore Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 1:02 PM To: Complexity Coffee Group Subject: [FRIAM] The Grand Design, Philosophy is Dead, and Hubris I just looked at the book review for Hawking and Mlodinow's book The Grand Design: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/indepth/45515 Although the book might be interesting, I was caught up by the statement Philosophy is Dead! Quote: The Grand Design begins with a series of questions: "How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves?", "How does the universe behave?", "What is the nature of reality?", "Where did all this come from?" and "Did the universe need a creator?". As the book's authors, Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow, point out, "almost all of us worry about [these questions] some of the time", and over the millennia, philosophers have worried about them a great deal. Yet after opening their book with an entertaining history of philosophers' takes on these fundamental questions, Hawking and Mlodinow go on to state provocatively that philosophy is dead: since philosophers have not kept up with the advances of modern science, it is now scientists who must address these large questions. Odd. -- Owen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
