[HN Gopher] Einstein and Hume's philosophy of time ___________________________________________________________________ Einstein and Hume's philosophy of time Author : pseudolus Score : 36 points Date : 2021-01-17 11:54 UTC (11 hours ago) (HTM) web link (aeon.co) (TXT) w3m dump (aeon.co) | HaoZeke wrote: | This is a bit of a giant leap. Scientific advances rely on many | many many previous works, just look at the references. I fail to | see the relevance of singling one out. | dang wrote: | The article opens with several references, from 1915 all the | way to 1949, in which Einstein reports Hume's influence on him | and says that without Hume it's possible he would never have | come up with relativity. That's as solid evidence of a link as | could exist. More importantly, though, this material is | interesting and worth discussing rather than dismissing. | | (That's in the site guidelines, by the way: " _Please don 't | post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A | good critical comment teaches us something._" | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html) | HaoZeke wrote: | Thank you for the reminder. I was overly dismissive and I'm | glad you called me out over it. To be more constructive | though, I feel like the intersection of the sciences and | philosophy now is purely driven by these kind of articles | which seek to establish that in the past research ideas would | borrow from concepts of philosophy. Globally education has | shifted further and further from this view, and without | articles like this, no living professional scientist would | know Hume from Kant. | | This declining relevance is true of other scientific works as | well, but that is rarely touched upon. I suppose in some | sense my comment expressed my annoyance that only | philosophical roots are rediscovered every now and then. | behnamoh wrote: | I used to like such articles, but years and years of education | made me realize what matters in the real world is the math you | know in order to back up your claims. Otherwise, knowing a bunch | of stuff (like this article) doesn't get you far at all, and in | fact, may give you a fake sense of knowledge which is worse than | not knowing these things in the first place. | HaoZeke wrote: | Exactly! Without the math to back it up, the additional | rationalizing is not a foundational study. It cannot be built | upon, and that is why it isn't a great idea. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-17 23:00 UTC)