Why science needs metaphysics (Introduction)

by dhw, Friday, December 18, 2015, 20:29 (3061 days ago) @ George Jelliss

GEORGE: Just came across this discussion of scientific method 
and thought it might be of interest here.-https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151216-physicists-and-philosophers-debate-the-boundari...-I hope you are all well and still as argumentative. 
I've been too busy to look in here on a regular basis.-It's always a pleasure to hear from you, George, as one of the very first contributors to this forum. We are indeed as argumentative as ever. David will disagree. (That's a joke.) Interesting article, which offers us enough diversity of opinion to justify caution in all our judgements. Two cherry-picked quotes:-QUOTE: Physicists' preoccupation with Popper “is really something that needs to stop,” Pigliucci said. “We need to talk about current philosophy of science. We don't talk about something that was current 50 years ago.”-Wonderful. So in fifty years' time, scientists won't talk about trends that are current now. Ugh, hardly worth bothering, then, is it? Link this to the next quote: -QUOTE: “Keep speculating,” Achinstein wrote in an email after the workshop, but “give your motivation for speculating, give your explanations, but admit that they are only possible explanations.”
“Maybe someday things will change,” Achinstein added, “and the speculations will become testable; and maybe not, maybe never.” We may never know for sure the way the universe works at all distances and all times, “but perhaps you can narrow the live possibilities to just a few,” he said. “I think that would be some progress.”-You could hardly wish for a more explicit endorsement of the sceptical approach to all universal theories. Our scientists and philosophers are all currently groping in the dark, and there is no more scientific backing for their hypotheses than there is for the hypotheses of the theists and the atheists. Three cheers for Achinstein: yes,we should keep looking, but we should keep our minds open because NOBODY knows the truth.