Can philosophy/metaphysics effectively help to deepen physics…or will it always be a way of attaching particulary deep thought (if done well) to even deeper thought?
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The authors, philosopher trained in physics David Albert and writer Rivka Galchen point out a problem they think ought to be focused on:
“-In the universe as we experience it, we can directly affect only objects we can touch; thus, the world seems local.
-Quantum mechanics, however, embraces action at a distance with a property called entanglement, in which two particles behave synchronously with no intermediary; it is nonlocal.
-This nonlocal effect is not merely counterintuitive: it presents a serious problem to Einstein’s special theory of relativity, thus shaking the foundations of physics.”
I’m pretty sure I’m not qualified to answer…
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See Also: David Albert’s turn on bloggingheads with Sean Carroll.
Also, maybe it’s a trend (writers moving directly to science)? Writer Louisa Gilder has a book out called “The Age Of Entanglement” on much the same subject, which she discusses here too on bloggingheads.
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Further: The enlightenment happened, so if you’re going to make a successful metaphysical theory, it’s good to try and understand the mathematical sciences of the day and go from there (Newtonian mechanics for Kant), like Kant did:
Michael Friedman’s Kant And The Exact Sciences tackles the subject ( I know him not and of course this too is more metaphysics and certainly not the mathematics of today…but if you’re going to be carrying Kant around …it’s good too understand how deep he went, what he seemed to understand and what he may have not understood at all about the Enlightenment explosion around him).
