Daniel Whiteson

Philosophy is why physics is interesting, right?

Imagine the day we get the answer to my question.

Okay, we found the fundamental nature of the universe.

It's these two things.

And everything bubbles out of that.

We can explain everything, economics, string theory, pies, whatever, kittens, from these two things.

Then we'll have the philosophy question.

Why these two things?

Right.

What does that mean about the universe when we've laid it bare and we've seen its fundamental nature?

That's why it's interesting, because of the philosophical questions.

So they drive all of our science, but most physicists are not interested in or not educated about, I'm not sure which philosophy.

And I think that historically it's been sort of dismissed.

You know, you have like famous folks like Feynman saying physicists need philosophers the way like birds need ornithologists or something.

And it's a clever quote, but I don't honestly even get it because I think birds could use ornithologists, you know?

Sure.

Who doesn't want to understand the context of what you're doing and why it's important?

So I think a lot of physicists, they're just, they're more mathy people.

They're less humanities and philosophy is squishier.

It's not so mathematical.