I reject reduction of all sciences to fundamental physics. (I would hold out for some kind of unity of science, but not via reduction.)
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Replying to @StephenPiment @Meaningness
But in the case of GR/QFT, both are already fundamental physics, so it seems to me very reasonable to seek a unified alternative, even if such would have no grand implications for other sciences.
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Replying to @StephenPiment
Yes. I see that my original tweet was unclear. I wasn’t meaning to deny that. Rather to point out that one can take an engineering approach to many problems that some rationalists might insist on taking a fundamental approach to instead.
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Replying to @Meaningness @StephenPiment
I'd put it differently. Such incompatible cases show that a new ontology is needed. Rationalists can worry about it all they like, but they aren't going to resolve the situation through ever longer syllogisms. 1/
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Replying to @handleym99 @StephenPiment
I think that is appropriate if you are working on that problem. Galison’s central claim in the paper is that increasingly researchers don’t care about ontology. I’m not sure he’s right about that.
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Replying to @Meaningness @StephenPiment
This seems to be the usual problem of making grand claims along the lines of "physicists think ..." (cf "women think ..." or "Asians think ..."). There are likely domains where 95% of physicists think the same way -- but this is, I'm sure, not one of them.
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Replying to @handleym99 @StephenPiment
Yes, it seems overly broad to me. OTOH it may have been a useful intervention in the philosophy of science at the time because foundationalism and nihilistic disunity-ish were both still considered credible by many.
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Interesting thread. As an theoretical astrophysics person, who has special interest in exploring observational implications of physical models, "it works" type engineering approach feels just deeply dissatisfactory. ...
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Well, “rationalism” is approximately “using patterns of thought that are effective in physics in other places where they don’t work well.” So one *should* use those ways of thinking in physics, and if someone doesn’t, they may be making a mistake.
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Replying to @Meaningness @joogipupu and
I took the GPS quote as meaning “don’t try to be foundational when doing engineering, even if you are combining quantum and relativity.” That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t think like a physicist when doing physics!
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However, in the paper, Galison seems to endorsing the “just fit the data” approach in physics itself. As a non-physicist, I’m not qualified to have an opinion about whether that’s a good move. I’m inclined to agree with you that it’s dubious, but I’m an ignorant outsider!
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