Peebles on Philosophy of Physics

Astrophysicist P. J. E. Peebles writes:

I argue that research in physics operates under an implicit community philosophy, and I offer a definition I think physicists would accept, by and large. I compare this definition to what philosophers, sociologists, and historians of science, with physicists, say we are doing.

He argues that there is an unspoken phylosophy of Physics that most physicists agree with, and they do not necessarily agree with what philosophers say.

Recall Weinberg’s remark that “no one has been able to think of any way to change quantum mechanics in any way that would preserve its successes without leading to logical absurdities.”

I agree with that. People complain about quantum mechanics a lot, but all their alternatives are absurd.

Einstein offered the elegant thought that (in the English translation by Sonja Bargmann 1954)

The supreme task of the physicist is to arrive at those universal elementary laws from which the cosmos can be built up by pure deduction.

I wrote a whole book on how Einstein ruined Physics with this sort of thinking.

People think that Einstein's greatest accomplishment was discovering relativity in 1905 from universal laws. My book shows that relativity was actually developed by others who worked directly from experimental results.

The above essay is a good summary of mainstream physicist thinking.