The relationship between physics and philosophy

Abner Shimony

pp. 177-184

in: Robert S. Cohen, Alfred Tauber (eds), Philosophies of nature: the human dimension, Berlin, Springer, 1998

Abstract

Working physicists, I believe, almost inevitably have strong philosophical interests, regardless of whether they have taken courses labeled "Philosophy" and whether they have liked what they have sampled. Their interest is implicit in the discipline of physics itself. Peter Bergmann, in the introduction to his Basic Theories of Physics I attributed to Einstein the view that "a theoretical physicist is ... a philosopher in workingman's clothes." I would omit the adjective "theoretical" and apply the characterization to experimentalists as well. This claim depends, of course, on a conception of what philosophy is. I propose the following: philosophy is the systematic search for perspective, for connections among aspects of the world, and for depth of explanation. Some physicists are drawn into their profession from the beginning because they have been convinced by a few revealing examples that the procedures of physical investigation help to achieve perspective, connections, and depth of explanation. These are philosophers from the start. Others are drawn in because of their fascination with specific phenomena. In my case, the onset of curiosity about the physical world, so far as I can recall, came at the age of four, when I saw my father siphoning wine out of a barrel, and I was amazed that the wine went up in the siphon before it descended. But even if the route to professional physics is via wonder at specific phenomena, an approach to philosophy, in the sense mentioned, is unavoidable, because the physicist's understanding of phenomena goes beyond the phenomena themselves to underlying causes and to connections.