Physics Needs Philosophy. Philosophy Needs Physics

Abstract

Contrary to claims about the irrelevance of philosophy for science, I argue that philosophy has had, and still has, far more influence on physics than is commonly assumed. I maintain that the current anti-philosophical ideology has had damaging effects on the fertility of science. I also suggest that recent important empirical results, such as the detection of the Higgs particle and gravitational waves, and the failure to detect supersymmetry where many expected to find it, question the validity of certain philosophical assumptions common among theoretical physicists, inviting us to engage in a clearer philosophical reflection on scientific method.

arXiv commentThis article text expands from a keynote talk given at the London School of Economics on 17 July 2016, in the context of the XVII UK-European Foundations of Physics conference

References in corpus (3)

• GW170817: Observation of Gravitational Waves from a Binary Neutron Star Inspiral
• Multi-messenger Observations of a Binary Neutron Star Merger
• Aristotle's Physics: a Physicist's Look

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