This chapter reconstructs the conversations and debates between philosophers and physicists before and during the first generation of quantum thinking. Rather than making an abstract case for epistemological or interdivisional pluralism, the chapter presents a set of intersecting and parallel lines of thought that perform the radical pluralism that was demanded of cosmological thinking in philosophy and physics. The hope is that such a reflection can disarm some of the anxiety regarding the superiority or inferiority of scientific and philosophical inquiry as if such a determination were a zero-sum game. Ultimately, this chapter argues that while singular in their mode of inquiry, philosophy and physics are inseparable once the meaning of each discourse’s findings enters the fray of human experience. Therefore, engagements with and against any quantum turn ought to prefer a kind of epistemological generosity rather than seek discrete territorial claims to intellectual labor.
This chapter reconstructs the conversations and debates between philosophers and physicists before and during the first generation of quantum thinking. Rather than making an abstract case for epistemological or interdivisional pluralism, the chapter presents a set of intersecting and parallel lines of thought that perform the radical pluralism that was demanded of cosmological thinking in philosophy and physics. The hope is that such a reflection can disarm some of the anxiety regarding the superiority or inferiority of scientific and philosophical inquiry as if such a determination were a zero-sum game. Ultimately, this chapter argues that while singular in their mode of inquiry, philosophy and physics are inseparable once the meaning of each discourse’s findings enters the fray of human experience. Therefore, engagements with and against any quantum turn ought to prefer a kind of epistemological generosity rather than seek discrete territorial claims to intellectual labor.
This paper examines the deep and enduring relationship between physics and philosophy, a connection that has shaped the trajectory of human inquiry from antiquity to the present. By tracing their shared historical roots, the paper emphasizes how early philosophical speculations laid the groundwork for scientific reasoning. Despite the modern institutional separation of these two disciplines, physics continues to grapple with questions that are fundamentally philosophical in nature, questions concerning the essence of time, space, causality, determinism, and the very nature of reality. The paper explores the epistemological structures that underpin scientific knowledge, such as the criteria for theory confirmation and falsifiability, and investigates the ontological assumptions embedded in classical and modern physics. Special attention is devoted to paradigm shifts in the history of science, including the contributions of figures such as Aristotle, Newton, Popper, and Kuhn, as well as the radical implications of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Through an analysis of contemporary debates, such as those surrounding interpretations of quantum mechanics, the multiverse, and the conceptual validity of string theory, the paper argues that philosophy remains indispensable for critically examining and contextualizing scientific thought. Far from being obsolete, philosophical reflection serves as a compass for navigating the conceptual challenges of physics. Ultimately, the dialogue between philosophy and physics is presented as a dynamic and reciprocal exchange, one that not only enriches both fields but is also necessary for advancing our understanding of the universe.
This paper examines the deep and enduring relationship between physics and philosophy, a connection that has shaped the trajectory of human inquiry from antiquity to the present. By tracing their shared historical roots, the paper emphasizes how early philosophical speculations laid the groundwork for scientific reasoning. Despite the modern institutional separation of these two disciplines, physics continues to grapple with questions that are fundamentally philosophical in nature, questions concerning the essence of time, space, causality, determinism, and the very nature of reality. The paper explores the epistemological structures that underpin scientific knowledge, such as the criteria for theory confirmation and falsifiability, and investigates the ontological assumptions embedded in classical and modern physics. Special attention is devoted to paradigm shifts in the history of science, including the contributions of figures such as Aristotle, Newton, Popper, and Kuhn, as well as the radical implications of quantum mechanics and general relativity. Through an analysis of contemporary debates, such as those surrounding interpretations of quantum mechanics, the multiverse, and the conceptual validity of string theory, the paper argues that philosophy remains indispensable for critically examining and contextualizing scientific thought. Far from being obsolete, philosophical reflection serves as a compass for navigating the conceptual challenges of physics. Ultimately, the dialogue between philosophy and physics is presented as a dynamic and reciprocal exchange, one that not only enriches both fields but is also necessary for advancing our understanding of the universe.
Abstract Quantum physics is being positioned as a new archive for addressing major theoretical problems in the field of international relations. Two of the major proponents of engaging quantum thinking within international relations, James Der Derian and Alexander Wendt, have argued that quantum thinking offers the possibility of a major paradigm shift in the field. Before we determine quantum’s revolutionary potential, the persistent and most pressing question for me is how to position quantum thinking among other kinds of and claims to knowledge. I want to horizontalize where different kinds of knowledge sit within the renewed attention to quantum theory. Rather than just horizontalize or flatten ontology, I want to see what happens when we place scientific and philosophical inquiry in dialogue, and what that conversation does to the authority and value of quantum thinking for the social sciences. The article reconstructs the dialogue between the first generation of quantum physicists and the philosophers who informed them. Rather than make an explicit argument about the philosophical debt of physics, I argue that a broad and highly interdisciplinary set of questions drove both fields well beyond the specific areas of expertise of any of these thinkers. I believe this adventure of ideas followed by physicists, philosophers, and social theorists alike offers us a way forward as the complexity of our contemporary global challenges confront us now with the necessity to think well beyond our disciplinary expertise.
This chapter, along with the next two chapters, sets the basic context for the readers to go into the topic of this book. Physicists, mathematicians, and philosophers struggle to clarify the foundations of quantum mechanics and debate on the interpretations of quantum mechanics. What is the foundation of quantum mechanics and how to interpret the formalism of quantum mechanics are the core issues of concern in the philosophy of physics. These two questions also involve fundamental issues in the general philosophy of science and even metaphysics and epistemology. This chapter introduces the original thoughts, historical developments, and current status of the interpretation of quantum mechanics, as well as its connection with the philosophy of science and metaphysics; it also analyzes the classifications by Bell, Leifer, and Cabello on the spectrum of interpretations of quantum mechanics, which can be regarded as a sort of “navigation map”. On this basis, the main object of discussion in this book is introduced – the quantum histories interpretation.
Introduction We saw in Part I that in addition to explaining consciousness there is another hard problem for the modern scientific worldview – understanding what quantum physics is telling us about reality. And if anything this one is harder. In philosophy of mind there is at least consensus enough for an orthodox position to exist (materialism), and a widespread expectation that it will be vindicated by future neuroscience. By contrast, in philosophy of physics all sides understand that quantum theory is compatible with a variety of metaphysical interpretations, and have little hope that new empirical discoveries will settle the matter. But both problems are “hard” in the sense that, despite tremendous intellectual effort over many decades, no clear progress has been made toward solving them. The basic idea of quantum consciousness theory is that bringing the two problems into contact may be the key to solving both (though I will be addressing only the mind–body problem in what follows). That this could be a novel idea attests to the fact that their philosophical discussions have evolved quite separately. While philosophers of physics have long been interested in the role of consciousness in the measurement process, they have engaged little with the mind–body problem per se; and philosophers of mind have been almost unanimous in dismissing the suggestion that consciousness has anything interesting to do with quantum physics. Social scientists might echo such skepticism, wondering how adding the problem of interpreting quantum theory to the problem of consciousness will help them . Besides piling up jargon and arcane debates, in moving to the sub-atomic level we are now even farther removed from the human world, and seemingly poised to engage in the most vulgar reductionism. Yet, naïvely one might expect the two problems to be related, for two reasons. The first is the intriguing analogies mentioned in Chapter 1 between the mental and quantum domains.
ENERAL philosophy claims to be the critical subject which lays down for all of us what we may be allowed to think, and yet it has played no part whatever in the great revolutions of human thought of the present century-those connected with relativity and the quantum theory. It might have been expected that the scientists would have been constantly consulting the philosophers as to the legitimacy of their various speculations, but nothing of the kind has happened. Since no one can dispense with some sort of metaphysic, each scientist has made one for himself, and no doubt they contain many crudities, but it would seem that a deep interest in metaphysic is a disadvantage rather than an advantage to the physicist-at least I have the impression that those of my friends who are most inclined to speculate on the ultimate things appear to be the ones whose scientific work is most hampered by doing so. Now I propose to risk a similar indiscretion. I want to embody in it the practical philosophy of a physicist, and I do not mean it as an attack on the pure philosophers, who are very reasonable people, only chargeable with the minor offence of not having made me want to read their books! I had better begin by stating shortly the ideas I intend to discuss. There is a notable contrast between the way we think about things and the way we think we ought to think about them.