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IS THERE RETREAT FROM NATURALISM IN PHYSICS?
Abstract
Naturalism is a view that everything that exists is Nature. There doesn't exist any other reality, apart from the natural one. Naturalists require that all phenomena be expressed taking into account only their natural causes. Natural causes are the ones that are accessible for scientific cognition. Science (physics) tries to describe this reality basing on observation and experiment as a foundation for creating theoretical constructs (theories) pertaining to natural phenomena. Mark Steiner, in his book entitled The Applicability of Mathematics as a Philosophical Problem, puts forward a surprising thesis that contemporary physicists in their work retreat from naturalist vision of science, because - as the author states - the real scientific activity of scientists does not comply with their basic methodological and philosophical convictions (with naturalism). To support his thesis he points to numerous cases of significant discoveries in the newest history of physics in which the decisive role was played by human imagination and not experimental facts. This way of discovering laws in contemporary physics is - in his conviction – anti-naturalist in the sense that it relies more on human invention, on manipulating formal structures using mathematical analogies than on the methods of classical empiricism. Such an approach - in his opinion - privileges human and not naturalist (empirical) point of view. Steiner thinks that it indicates a turn towards anthropocentric viewpoint in the methodology of physics. In my view it is an over-interpretation of †natural' cognitive procedures existing in contemporary science and relying on the use of a well-known scheme: problem - hypothesis - criticism - problem modification. Moreover, Steiner's suggestions do not match facts concerning the development of the newest cosmology in which scientific development is stimulated using sophisticated observations.
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