No problem, having to sort though crap loads of cross-referenced, poorly indexed, and scattered all over the place documentation just to get to the little bit of information I need, comes with this job.
I'll try to be brief but no guaranties. You're touching on some broad reaching subjects.
What would you expect from a Philosophy of Biology Department? As for "most parts of biology" stems cells are probably one of the broadest reaching aspects of biology, from reproduction to development, immunology, healing of the skin and blood vessels from wounds, regulating angiogenesis (growth of new blood vessels), even the progression of cancer. Heck, even plants and insects have stem cells.
I don't think the authors of that were/are in a "philosophy of biology dept", are they. IIRC they seemed to be working in an institute of cancer research in Paris.
Seriously? "(by which I mean all branches of physics and chemistry, most parts of biology and most of maths)" does it have to do your laundry for you too?
I have no idea what you mean there by asking "Seriously?" ... I am saying (since it seems not to have been clear) that those are areas of science (ie all of physics and chemistry, most of biology and maths ... though "all" is too sweeping a classification, because there are fringe areas even under the headings "physics & chemistry") which I am calling "core" or "fundamental: ie areas of science dealing directly with studies that involve the major established theories and "laws" of science. Medicine is really outside of that.
Kidding aside though, what typical scientist is doing all that. Why ask more of philosophers of biology than, well, just biologists or philosophy and philosophers as a whole than just science and scientists as a whole?
Again some major confusion now - I did not say or remotely imply (anywhere) that any scientists were doing "all of that" ... I'm talking about scientists who work in those core fundamental fields, eg in theoretical physics, solid-state physics, physical instrumental chemistry, biological evolution and gene research, all of maths that is dealing directly or indirectly with what we experience as the world of reality around us.
Near as I can recall the only scientific developments with such broad reacting aspects were general relativity and quantum field theory. While they didn't involve most of maths they did require new aspects of and approaches in math to be created.
See above
GR was published in 1916. What's considered the basic start of QFT (QED) was published in 1927. However, it took decades and a crap load of people and work to get to what is QFT and The Standard Model (linking all forces but gravity and relating all know particles). The finial aspect was considered the development of Quantum Chromodynamics (a strong nuclear force analogy of the quantum electrodynamics, QED, for electromagnetism) in around 1973.
Such broad reaching developments don't come around often and get harder ever time.
Same thing again ... so, see the above
Again its not a matter of "that any of us could not similarly add" its simply who did add it and how.
Well who did “add it & how”? We are talking about the authors of the papers that have been linked over the past few pages. And from what I saw there, they were adding very little, if anything, of clear value, and not anything in core fundamental science (they were offering a suggestion of a way to contribute in medical science).
As far as I have seen, despite various claims for philosophy, there is actually no great contribution from philosophy in any of the claims being made in those links
Certainly, if your field is the philosophy of science or the philosophy of math then knowing science and /or math is just part of the job. Why shouldn't Wallace's actual career choices and position be the delineating factor rather than simply your preference?
Sorry, but I assume you are just making a silly remark/joke now. Look – I am saying that when people who work in university philosophy departments, make it their life's work to study the maths of quantum theory and quantum cosmology, then it seems to me they should be in a physics or maths department rather than in a department labelled “philosophy”. It's not a complaint, I am just saying that Wallace (and doubtless some others) seem to be wrestling with the same problems that theoretical physicists have been wrestling with ever since the discovery of QM.
For the aspects of reality thing, that comes back to the Wigner's friend experiment I linked some pages ago. Now Wigner had intended the thought experiment to show the dependence on consciousness for the for superposition of states to result in a single state, either A or B. However, in the experiment preformed quantum particles stood in for winger and his friend, eliminating that consideration of a dependence on consciousness at least for this experiment, but still shows both can get different results that are both true.
Article linked below
https://www.scientificamerican.com/...ox-has-major-implications-for-quantum-theory/
OK, well we are surely getting a bit silly now, but – firstly that is an article in a popular magazine, ie Scientific American, it is not a published research paper (so we should be a bit careful about how we treat that to start with). Secondly its' talking about what Wigner thought in the 1960's (what he thought about a 1920's thought experiment from Schroedinger (cat in a box, apparent “paradox”). The entire idea has of course been re-raised many times (and the article links a recent, 2020, paper doing that). But now you are taking this whole thread in the direction of arguing about what exactly is happening with things like the apparent entanglement of different quantum particles/fields …
… that is an enormous discussion which the best theoreticians have been trying to sort out for nearly 100 years, and without any definite or widespread agreement. You are talking about the fact that quantum theory has raised ideas of various strange and seemingly counter-intuitive properties which the particle-fields seem to display … and raising that as if it's at the heart of the matter for this thread and the thing which we must now discuss and try to solve …
… just because there are some very puzzling aspects of the way our current theory of QM/QFT appears to describe the “reality” of particle-fields that compose all of what we experience as the universe around us, and just because (in fact) many attempted experimental measurements seem to support those unexpected strange properties (such as entanglement), that does not mean that academic philosophy in general is making some significant contribution to what we now recognise as “science” (ie a different subject from philosophy, with a fundamentally different approach) …
… do you want to move the discussion of this thread into one of concentrating on those peculiar/unexpected implications of QM, and do you want to do that as a means of claiming that philosophy is making an important contribution to that area of human knowledge, in a way that the scientists who work in that field are either not making themselves or cannot make themselves? Is that where you are now heading? Because that's what it sounds like?
What I am saying about any of that, is that it's not Philosophy simply to think about how we try to understand what we have learned, and what we are still learning, about quantum theory as a way (seemingly the correct way) to describe the “reality” of nature as it actually exists with the most fundamental particle-fields. That's something that we have discovered through science. It's something we have pursued and studied through science. If you want to say that “thinking” about such issues is actually “philosophy”, then I think you are really back to claiming that all constructive thought is philosophy (and NOT science or anything else), and I don't think that helps at all.
If you are working in particle physics, in a science dept., then what you are doing is science (and not philosophy). Eugene Wigner and Erwin Schroedinger were both scientists (theoretical physicists); not philosophers. David Wallace is described as a Philosopher (I don't know how he'd describe himself), but like many philosophers with a strong background in maths and theoretical physics, he has taken a very deep interest in the problems raised by various seemingly peculiar issues within QM … but that does not make the problem, or the subject, one of “philosophy” … all that is happening is that scientists (and some philosophers) are trying to work out exactly how we should think of or describe or understand the properties that fundamental particle-fields/forces seem to have … and that is ultimately an area of, and an issue, in what we now call “science” (whoever is working in it). Why is that science and not philosophy? … Answer – because all of our initial knowledge of subatomic particles started within experimental science, and all of the theoretical research was done within science by people called scientists (even if the early ones such as Schroedinger and Bohr enjoyed debating philosophy and enjoyed talking about the famous names in past philosophy … at that time, scientists and all sorts of other intellectuals seemed to think it was clever and sophisticated to indulge themselves in such discussions of philosophy … they were of course, after all, living not long after an age in which philosophy was still thought of as the great intellectual pursuit) …
… or to put most of that more simply – if you look at the published work in QM, then afaik 99.99...% of the genuine research papers are in the science literature (journals like Phys Rev. Phil Trans, and early papers also in chemistry eg in J.Chem Soc. And JACS), and similarly 99.99..% of the people publishing that work have been scientists … NOT philosophers. Very simply, that's why it's science, and not philosophy …
… though as I said above (which was apparently not clear or misinterpreted) – philosophers or anyone else, any of us here even!, might make useful contributions when it comes to suggestions on what might actually be happening with particle-fields when we talk about effects such as entanglement or superposition, or in general all sorts of peculiarities associated with the famous double-slit experiment.
Eg, & just as a last comment or example on that –there is the now well known example where in 1969/70 a then little known psychicist/theoretician named Edward Tryon was at a conference on cosmology, when in the middle of someone else's talk (ie a verbal paper or research presentation) he suddenly blurted out aloud the thought that our universe might have originated from a so-called “quantum fluctuation” (ie a random change of state/energy of what had been identified as the universal Vacuum Energy). At the time everyone in the audience thought it was joke and they all laughed. But shortly afterwards Tryon published a paper explaining what he had in mind (see the two links below)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Tryon
https://cosmo.nyu.edu/andrei/physicsII/ET.pdf
Something else to note – in the late 1800's when people like JJ Thompson and P Zeeman were publishing early results in atomic theory that were soon to lead to ideas of QM (yes, I do know about Max Planck), they were publishing in a well known & prestigious journal called Philosophical Magazine (“Phil. Mag.”) … the point being that arroud 1900 the remnenets of historical philosophy were still present in a lot of what scientists were describing. It was still being thought of in some ways, as a continued part of earlier formal philosophy (in German papers, Annalen der Physik, Ann. Phys., and Zeitschrift für Physik were probably the main journals where a lot of early quantum papers were published).
At that time, and certainly 50 to 100 years earlier (eg (1800 -1850's) many scientists in Europe were also still deeply religious. They continued to believe that Christianity in particular did provide the true explanation for Man's existence and for the existence of the Earth and the whole universe … they prayed to a God, and they believed that miracles happened. And that was at a time when really major advances in science were starting to be made.
The point there, is that like philosophy, religious beliefs were still thought to be something that scientists must take into account in their explanations and theories. Religious ideas were still thought to be making a contribution to science … just as we are now claiming that philosophical ideas are still making an important contribution to science. I think that really looks just like a remnant of Man's history of what was believed to be educated & sophisticated thinking about the true answers in what at that time was still being thought of as Natural Philosophy … ie religious beliefs continued to be claimed as an important, or even vital, contribution … and it was the same with philosophical ideas certainly up to the early 1900's when many scientists continued to believe that earlier Philosophy & earlier philosophers were to be greatly admired as sophisticated important intellectuals who provided great insights into all the sort of things that were now being studied by new people called “scientists” … that has been a slow process of gradual change and gradually shifting opinion over several centuries from the times of people like Galileo and Newton.
Sorry, running out of time.
