A recent paper by Katherine Brading and Marius Stan, How Physics Flew the Philosophers’ Nest, begins with the words “Nowadays, physics and philosophy are housed in separate departments on university campuses. They are distinct disciplines with their own journals and conferences, and in general they are practiced by different people, using different tools and different methods” (Brading & Stan p312). The paper goes on to point out that “this was not always the case” (ibid.), and presents an argument about the precise circumstances and reason for the split, which they locate in the 18th century. My main concern here is not with the historical details, however, but with the legacy of the split – the separate departments, journals and conferences.
This division is bad news for anyone interested in the philosophy of physics. After all, Nature knows nothing of the academic divisions and cultures that we humans have imposed on it. Although things are not so bad at the “cutting edge” – the part of physics that my friends and relations always seem to assume I’m interested in, namely quantum physics, relativity and cosmology, where there is much informed debate about what is really “out there” (or indeed, “in here”) among both philosophers and physicists – there are topics in physics that are much closer to everyday life, such as the nature of measurement, which do not seem to attract the same amount of interest (or funding) from either side of the divide. Even in the recent philosophy of measurement literature, much of which has arisen from the 2018 redefinitions of some of the SI units, there seems to be very little actual engagement with science.
Brading and Stan’s reference to “different tools and different methods” is important, because it also extends to a difference in the languages that are used by the two camps. For, while physics is an avowedly quantitative science which is expressed in the language of algebra, philosophy – even the philosophy of science – still seems to be dominated by the written word, and to deal almost exclusively with qualitative concepts and statements; so that even quite recent papers in the field can sometimes read a bit like the works of Newton, who lived in an age when the expression of laws and theorems was still very much done in words.
In her 2000 publication “Rethinking the Scientific Revolution”, the late Margaret Osler, referring to a work edited by Robert Palter entitled “The Annus Mirabilis of Sir Isaac Newton”, complained that the papers which made up the book were “full of mathematical formulae” [Osler p9], and lamented the paucity of references in the index to the topics she was particularly interested in, namely Newton’s work on alchemy and his religious interests. One could debate whether or not the book was intended to cover those topics, of course, but that is not really my concern here. The legacy I owe to Osler concerns a procedure I have christened “the Margaret Osler Test” in her honour, though it is based on an interest in the topic which is really the converse of Osler’s.
The Margaret Osler Test is my way of assessing a new (to me) work in the philosophy of science, in order to ascertain whether it is going to be worth reading. What I do is basically a very brief skim-reading in which I turn the pages slowly enough that I can spot any mathematical formulae. If there aren’t any, I conclude that the work does not really engage with quantitative science, and so I don’t read it.
That may seem harsh and simplistic. Admittedly, most papers to which I apply the test fail it – in other words, they are all words, and I don’t read them. So am I rejecting too much? Maybe – but I can’t see how a paper that does not contain any of the very language in which quantitative physical science is written – mathematics – is going to help us to engage with such a science. Moreover, this engagement is essential if we are ever going to tackle the problems raised by Brading & Stan, and stimulate dialogue between these separate communities.
References:
Brading, K. & Stan, M. How Physics Flew the Philosophers’ Nest. Studies in the History & Philosophy of Science 88 (2021), 312-320
Osler, M. The New Newtonian Scholarship and the Fate of the Scientific Revolution. In Rethinking the Scientific Revolution (2000).