After a long break, I am resuming Philosophy Mondays with a brief interlude post. I have previously written about the importance of a connection between philosophy and physics.

There are two possible extreme failure modes. On the one hand there is an extreme reductionism which posits that physics is all you need. If only we had a “theory of everything” in physics we could explain everything and there would be no need for philosophy. I think this fundamentally underestimates the importance of emergent phenomena, with the most important one being the growth of information and intelligence. 

The thinking of Jenann Ismael beautifully shows how we must account for information and agents acting on information if we want to more deeply understand the world. I am still reading her book “How Physics Makes Us Free” (will report back when finished). In the meantime though I highly recommend watching this beautiful conversation between Ismael and Curt Jaimungal

Listening to it also reminded me of Sara Imari Walker’s observation about signatures of intelligent life on other planets. There are many different explanations that can account for bio signatures such as certain gases in the atmosphere, but if you observed the launch of satellites into orbit you would have affirmative proof.

The other extreme failure mode is to believe that philosophy can be entirely detached from physics. That we can simply use language to reason our way to morality without needing any recourse to physics. Even logic as a branch of philosophy operates only at the level of language, albeit the formal language of mathematics. There are several reasons we cannot ignore physics altogether, which all arise from the fact that we are beings with a physical body, living in a physical world. This is why physical problems such as absorbing states matter so much because we can’t simply “reboot.”

Given that we need physics, the seeming lack of progress on fundamental aspects has been deeply frustrating. But there is good news. It feels like we are finally willing to make room for alternative proposals after having been stuck on string theory and dark matter/energy as dominant paradigms. I strongly suggest listening to the beginning of the following conversation between Philip Mannheim and Curt Jaimungal. It provides an incredibly lucid explanation of why Einstein’s gravity from General Relativity may be missing some terms.

At the same time we are also getting new observational data which suggests that we were previously undercounting matter. Between some form of gravity with higher order terms and some better accounting, I believe that there is a good chance that we may be able to conclude that there is no dark matter (which would make dark matter and dark energy the equivalent of epicycles). Here is Sabine Hossenfelder on the new matter data:

There is also new work on reconciling quantum theories with general relativity, along with alternative formalizations of quantum mechanics that may provide new insights.

All of this progress makes me optimistic that we are on the cusp of several breakthroughs in our understanding of the physical world. The rapid growth in AI capabilities will further accelerate this work. Progress on some of these problems will support the effort of reconnecting physics and philosophy in mutually beneficial ways.