I was reading an interesting book by Carlo Rovelli named Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution when I encountered a point toward the philosophical side rather than that of the physical I believe is worth commenting on. It is a very minor point in the book- just a single page. It did bring me to reflect upon philosophical history though.
The point was about the influence of Ernst Mach on philosophy and in particular analytic philosophy. Dr. Rovelli seemed to feel that analytic philosophy was in the anti-metaphysical camp as was logical positivism and perhaps empiricism. Mach influenced Einstein and Heisenberg and apparently Alexsandr Bogdanov as well. Bogdanov was a co-founder of the Bolsheviks and “principal thinker” (I would demure and say it was Trotsky though of course I may be incorrect) who expropriated one of Mach’s terms for his own; empiriocriticism. Mach’s name was also an apparent alternative title for the Vienna Circle. The Vienna Circle included people like Wittgenstein and Rudolph Carnap. In my opinion quantum mechanics is itself metaphysics that were proven to be mostly accurate and can ’’get things done’. One cannot easily see the quantum world with ordinary senses; it is an evidently true metaphysics that isn’t completely charted, mapped or understood and may be supplanted by some other metaphysics theory one day.
From my point of view analytic philosophy isn’t a continuation of either logical positivism or empiricism. Neither is it anti-metaphysical, instead it is a linguistic effort that considers relations between words and objects and words for in-themselves in addition to epistemology. That is analytic philosophy is a synthetic application of logic and symbolic logic to epistemological and semantic questions. The field also considers the meaning of signs (semiotics). Analytic philosophy has roots in phenomenalism as well as logic. It has roots in Descartes and French rationalism as well as Aristotle and Frege. Analytic philosophy is at home in Sartre’s existentialism which in a sense is a union of rationalism, phenomenalism and symbolic logic. Analytic philosophy is more of a nominalist character, and more toward W.V.O. Quine and P.F. Strawson’s philosophical camp than that of A.J. Ayer (Language, Truth and Logic).
Analytic philosophy considers words and meanings phenomenally yet of course with structure, and Wittgenstein did early work in his Blue and Brown books in demonstrating methods of constructing compilations of words sounds and words with meaning. Wittgenstein’s work though that did add to the growth of analytic philosophy couldn’t be said to be empiricism from and epistemological point of view. That is I believe it is self-standing and serves rather well as a root of analytic philosophy rather than as an anti-metaphysic.
In some respects language is itself a metaphysic constructed to associate words and symbols with aspects of sense percepts that cohere within some kind of field. Quantum mechanics analyzes that field’s phenomena very informatively. Analytic philosophy would perhaps limit itself to consideration of the meaning and source of the language used by physicists to describe phenomena they study, research or develop theoretically instead of being anti-metaphysics or anti-anything. Quine in his ‘The Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ showed that all language does have a mental origin and that there is not a direct relationship originating in a reverse direction. That isn’t a complex idea. It is epistemologically important though I would think. An apple tree is called an apple tree because people have built that name for it, or for the phenomena of apple tree growth. The classification of words as objects and events and etc is the heart of analytic philosophy. Rather than being a continuation of logical positivism and empiricism, analytic philosophy is their refutation. Analytic philosophy is a self-standing method for considering what the meaning of statements are. It accomplishes that without prejudice toward meta-physics or any other word. Obviously words and word-meanings are found within lexicons that are associated with a wealth of meanings and word referents to objects. Like quantum mechanics it has nominal values and less than infinite certitude of its values or of any transcendent values that might be referred to as being ‘absolute’ (Kierkegaard would have laughed at that word because of his opinion of Hegel).
It is true that symbolic logic has numerous forms that go beyond language and into mathematical symbolism or even other lexicons. Analytic philosophy is though and abstract study of words and signs that are themselves abstractions constructed with mind and thought rather than things in the word or things in the field (even quantum field). Analytic philosophy’s actual origin could be fairly attributed to Descartes's Meditations Upon a Method as well as any empiricism seeking to rid itself of metaphysics.
Metaphysics is simply greater physics. Perhaps metaphysics is the leading edge of inductive physics, if there can be said to be such a field. Maybe one should use Kant’s term in order to call unknown quantum mechanical speculations or other field phenomena Noumenal physics. One can say Noumenal physics with embarrassment though it refers to metaphysical references. There obviously is a lot of unknown aspects to quantum physics these days.
Analytic philosophers eliminated what was called ‘categorical errors’ from language and philosophical thought and systems in the effort to understand better constructions in the field of philosophy. Some philosophical systems did have issues that arose within the way the language of their systems were formed. Language efficiency and understanding phenomenally, epistemologically, might be said to be what analytic philosophy is about. It does not return though to naive empiricism or a form of objective reality different or outside of human experience and knowledge. It is a tool fo understanding human knowledge and experience and of course that is well served by fine books like the one I have been reading of Carlo Rovelli.
I believe I would conclude this comment by pointing out that Plato’s realm of forms paradigm that has become eponymous for realism (platonic realism) has as much in common with quantum mechanics as the somewhat rootless nominalism of analytic philosophy, Saul Kripke in Naming and Necessity indicated that he believed words have meanings that last for a while-even thousands of years-and in that sense are not simply nominal names cohering within lexicons that are rather short-lived or that exist only while they are being used by sentient beings. Kripke’s position is called Neo-realism. He recognized that words can evolve meanings degenerately in regard to their initial meaning and disappear too. I believe that quanta have some similarities to Platonic forms in that quanta all seem to exist only in certain forms rather in in a variety of new forms. Energy must take certain forms and quantities or become something else that is also a known pre-existing form. Realism, analytic philosophy and its phenomenal and rational roots may be paradigms for considering language about quantum phenomena, if not for developing metaphysically inductive insights.
I believe that scientists may necessarily want to ground their speculations and knowledge in that of common human experience and from that basis consider the uncertainty and paradoxes of quantum mechanics. Analytic philosophy though considers human and subjective thought too in its relationships to words and fields of study like quantum mechanics. In other words analytic philosophy does not eliminate the mind as the primary player in describing the world. He is rather like Adam before human God brought innumerable animals for him to name. If he was imaginative Adam might have invented several names for the same objects in case he forgot what earlier names were.
Logical positivism and empiricism sought direct relations between language and objects that eliminated any element of the mind or mentality. P.F. Strawson in his book ‘Individuals’ described the epistemological trouble with that. All language is rooted in the mind or a mind. Philosophers made a division between extensional language solely concerned with real objects and intensional language that was of a psychological nature and concerned solely with concepts of the mind without direct relation or extension to real objects (not in the sense of Platonic objects or forms). Quine and Strawson each showed that all language has a mind component. Maybe the word ‘field’ is the word that might best be said to be entirely extensional, with its entirety about as accurate as the massless description of a photon (some say photons are mostly massless with an asterisk).
It does seem as if the quantum universe is a field phenomenon. Dr. Rovelli skillfully elucidated for non-scientists several aspects of the history of the development of quantum mechanics (as have many others) yet in a novel and informative way that seems to build new knowledge for readers simplifying very subtle points inclusive of relativity. One learns of the psi wave-function collapse versus the many worlds (Everettian) interpretation and other viewpoints of the essential nature of electrons, photons and implications for quantum entanglement and super-positioning. It is entirely possible, though it is a metaphysical concept, that it is God who hosts and selects the field phenomena to collapse or entanglement into a steady state in the Universe that appears as matter or even quanta. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
One might infer that the Apostle John was a brilliant philosopher whom had studied the nature of language and reality for most of his life before beginning his account of the gospel of Jesus Christ and of course be wrong. Even so John’s writing anticipated select paradigmatic positions of analytic philosophy by two thousand years. Words are created in the mind or spirit and observations and understanding are of mind. Science must leave out some metaphysical or meta-theological speculation that isn’t objectively before them or quantifiable; people of faith are not so limited.
