>>12450496>What's not at all clear is how either interpretation furthers the behavior that scientists have in their labs. How does this matter to physics?This is of course a good question. It's not directly useful in the same sense that a new device or instrument would be useful in collecting more data, or a new mathematical technique might be useful in creating more accurate formal models, but philosophical perspectives do have a huge impact on the way we think about things and approach problems.
The emphasis on mathematical rigor and an interest in formal notation in the 1800s is a good example. Karl Weierstrass and Richard Dedekind were very interested in philosophy of math, and particularly the epistemology of mathematics. none of this was really directly useful at the time, but it lead to people like Frege, Russell, and Hilbert, and eventually the development of computer science.
There are other examples too. For example, cybernetics was largely a philosophical movement that emphasized a "holistic" and non-reductive approach science, but it was instrumental in the emergence stuff like network science/complexity theory, systems biology, and cognitive science. In other words, the philosophical values of early cybernetic philosophers lead to different ways of looking at
natural phenomenon, and these new perspective ultimately produced new ways of doing science.
There are other examples too. Pythagorean philosophy and the emergence of mathematical approaches to physical and musical phenomenon in ancient Greece is another example. And in fact, the Enlightenment and the Scientific Revolution were very much influenced by a renewed interest in the Pythagorean philosophy of ancient Greece. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, scholarship mainly occurred within an Aristotelian/Scholastic epistemological framework. During the Enlightenment, many scholars reintroduced elements of Platonic and Pythagorean epistemology into their work.
