Dear Vladimir
聽 聽 聽 Since you wanted me to make some critical comments on you essay, I am here to write. I did not write this earlier because, as I had already mentioned, I am not a professional philosopher. For the same reason, when I tried to go through your essay, I found many remarks based on several references which I could not follow. Therefore, I could not find an actual application of what your ideas are. I apologize for my incompetence. However, I do strongly agree with you that dialectics (I call contradictions) are necessary to be thought about because, according to me, we use those everyday without understanding -- I would rather say that contradiction is what prevails, decisions are the limits. I hope you may have already got my view while you read my essay. Nonetheless, I shall take this opportunity to express my views regarding the article by C. Rovelli that you referred to. Being from a physics background, I would focus on the following two quotes: ``Philosophy is dead'' -- Hawking, ``Philosophy is useless'' -- Weinberg. I do not agree with Carlo's judgments, where he called these two people ``anti-philosophers'' to push forward his arguments for necessity of philosophy and physics for each other. Hawking and Weinberg opposed philosophy for different reasons and which were based on their personal expectations. Let me take Hawking first and Weinberg second.
聽 聽 聽 Hawking's quote was followed by the sentence: ``Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics.'' I absolutely agree with this comment because I have not seen any contribution from a philosopher to solve some longstanding problem in physics. I do not think modern philosophy deals with the questions regarding the foundations physics like what Berkeley did by questioning the foundations of calculus in `The Analyst' or Mach did by questioning the concept of ``mass'' in `Science of Mechanics' or Poincare did by pointing out that mathematical science might be an insoluble contradiction in `Science and Hypothesis'. Even after that, what is necessary is an end product and practical application. This is the single most reason why Newton and Einstein are more famous than the above phenomenal thinkers. Therefore, the question is about the practicality of philosophy. This is what Hawking could not find from modern philosophy. However, that does not mean that I agree with all of Hawking's views later in that book referred to by Rovelli.
聽 聽 聽 聽Weinberg's case is different. He has a personal dream of a unified theory and he considers philosophy to be useless because he questions ``Can philosophy give us any guidance toward a final theory?''聽 I do not know what is a final theory and I do not care about somebody's personal dream. Therefore, I consider such anti-philosophical聽 attitude to be meaningless.聽 It appears to me that he can not find his philosophical thoughts leading him to some final theory which he seeks and then puts that burden on philosophers. That is unacceptable for me.聽 聽 聽 聽 Therefore, as far as Rovelli's article is concerned, I did not find it of much use other than a good popular article because I could not find a discussion about in what way we can actually apply philosophy to do physics and apply scientific theories to answer philosophical queries.聽 To do that one needs to think of physics and mathematics in a collective fashion as ``mathematical science'' and that needs to be founded on measurements or relation between observed and the observers.聽 If I suggest somebody to read about philosophical writings about physics and why both need to go hand in hand, I would suggest reading Berkeley, Poincare, Mach, etc.聽聽 聽 聽 聽
Further, I聽find it strange Rovelli only writes about Western half of the world when it comes to philosophy, while the two fathers of quantum mechanics, namely, Schroedinger and Heisenberg found their thoughts akin to the philosophy embedded in a聽culture on the other half of the world. Such strangeness only increases when I learn that the father of relativity, Einstein, said to Tagore, a poet from a country on that other half of the world, that聽 ``Then I am more religious than you are!'' while discussing about science, truth, reality, etc.聽
聽 聽 聽I wish you luck with your essay.
Regards
Abhishek