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Philosophy today gets no respect.

Listen, for instance, to Stephen Hawking in his The grand design book: "How can we understand the world in which we find ourselves? ... Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern development in science, particularly physics." I didn’t expect a statement like this from Hawking, not from Hawking. Is there any physical equation which does not assume a philosophical setup for the environment described by the equation? For example, maybe Galileo did not comprehend that his law of inertial motion require absolute space but Newton did and Newton had a problem with that, a philosophical problem: if the force can act on the space how it could be that space is not acting on the force? So, when Hawking says "nothing can move faster than light, but that speed limit does not apply to the expansion of space itself", is he aware that he is talking philosophy?

And there is more. "Each particle of matter has a corresponding antiparticle. If they meet, they annihilate each other, leaving pure energy", says Hawking. Energy of what or whom? Maybe God? Just putting the adjective ‘pure’ does not secure the concept of energy within physics. So, when Hawking says "It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going", he is contradicting himself. His ‘pure energy’ reassembles rather well the Judeo-Christian concept of soul leaving the body after physical death. Religion is a kind of philosophy.

the grand design

 2010-10-31 

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