A Tour Through Philosophy of Physics
Philosophy of physics is a massive field. Philpapers lists 15,000 papers in the philosophy of quantum mechanics and the philosophy of space and time alone. Most philosophy of physics is focused within these two areas. Yet much of that philosophy aims at solving problems that physicists no longer care about, never cared about, or waste little time on. Rickles notes that the topics covered in introductions to phil physics are "usually very old fashioned and limited in scope: 'spacetime' means the 'twin paradox'; 'statistical mechanics' means 'time assymetry'; and 'quantum theory' means 'the measurement problem'." Because such introductions are numerous, this tour provides a more modern state-of-the-art view. We begin by asking what it is that physicists do and what sorts of treats they serve up for our philosophical study. Following the Physicist Physicists build theories, models, simulations, experiments, tools to facilit...