Philosophies

David Wallace

Abstract This introductory chapter provides an overview of philosophy of physics, which is an interdisciplinary field sitting between physics proper, mainstream philosophy, and the general philosophy of science, and communicating ideas and insights between them. Philosophy of physics is mostly concerned not with physics as a whole but with particular areas within it. Given a field in physics, one can consider the conceptual—that is, philosophical—questions that arise in that field, and the problems in each sub-field are distinctive. The chapter briefly discusses many of these, including some in cutting-edge areas of physics like quantum cosmology, black holes, and string theory. But it notes that the bulk of work in philosophy of physics is concerned with three areas where the physics is reasonably well established: the philosophy of spacetime; the philosophy of statistical mechanics; and the philosophy of quantum mechanics.

Frank A. J. L. James

Konstantin V. Kazakov

Dugald R. Murdoch

Now that Bohr's philosophy of quantum physics has been surveyed in detail, it is time to provide a general description of his philosophy that illuminates the details. The question which I wish to address, then is: what is the general philosophy, or philosophical point of view, that underlies Bohr's philosophy of physics? Can his philosophy be neatly categorised in terms of any well known philosophical position? Apropos his philosophy of physics in particular, the question of primary interest is: to what extent, if any, is Bohr's philosophy of physics realist? No simple answer to this question can be given: indeed, certain realist and non-realist components are subtly interwoven in his philosophy, and to unravel them we shall need a fairly refined conception of what constitutes a realist interpretation of physics. Realism in the interpretation of physics The basis of realism is the view that statements of a certain class predicate properties of real objects, the truth-values of these statements being determined by reality as it is independently of how it appears to us to be. This notion is captured in the following characterisation of what constitutes the adoption of a realist interpretation of a physical theory.

Cecilia Flori

Gui Qi-quan

Through the decipherment of the three copies of the new physics philosophy,the author clarifies his own quantum mechanics philosophy view and the comprehension of the general theory of Relativity,at the same time,from the particular angle of view the author expresses that the local physics philosophy research is in the renewal now.