Spacetime is the fairy tale of a classical manifold. It is irreconcilable with quantum effects in gravity and most likely, in a strict sense, it does not exist. But to dismiss a mythical being that has inspired generations just because it does not really exist is foolish. Rather it should be understood together with the story-tellers through whom and in whom the being exist. ”
But even that, is just .. WOW !
This is a philosophy of science issue, and any authors with anti-realist inclinations could additionally oppose a variety of physics constructs as having literal ontological counterparts. At the opposite pole is the across-the-board scientific realist, and varieties of views in-between, as well as those who dismiss the whole realism / antirealism dichotomy as meaningless. (Past example:
"There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract quantum physical description. ...It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature." --Niels Bohr, spoken at the Como conference, 1927)
Physics World released a couple of articles some years ago that might make a nice, quick introduction for you to these philosophical positions held / not held by physicists, but I can only excerpt a portion here. [Note that today most philosophers of science have backgrounds in science themselves. Indeed, retired / practicing scientists will even take up the role at times, as illustrated in the variety of quotes further down; such as Bridgman / Medawar proclaiming that a standardized 'scientific method' is a myth]:
When "Physics World" ran a special poll last year to find out how physicists think philosophically, more than 500 readers replied. Here are the results.
Robert P. Crease: Everybody, including scientists, makes seat-of-the-pants practical judgements about what's real and what's not. The common-sense assumptions underlying these judgements can be unrecognized, inconsistent and even untenable; they can be home-grown, inherited and absorbed from others. But when someone is engaged in an activity as complex as science, it is almost impossible to avoid making such practical judgements. No matter how implicit and readily revised these judgements may be, they are based on preconceptions of what the world consists of and what the world's most important distinctions and categories are - in other words of how it all hangs together.
Professional philosophers analyse these preconceptions and up the ante on them. They formally rework the assumptions into consistent, fully articulated and intellectually supportable positions. They then give them names, such as realist, antirealist, critical realist, constructivist, hermeneutical realist, and so on. To qualify as a philosophical position, it has to be advanced in clear words, articulated in appropriate detail and depth, and be defensible against criticism when scrutinized in a philosophical peer review.
Why philosophy shouldn't be avoided
I've often heard scientists call philosophical attention to their field irrelevant at best, and confusing and destructive at worst. Indeed, many scientists advise that philosophy should be avoided altogether. Steven Weinberg, for example, named a chapter in his book "Dreams of a Final Theory" "Against the philosophers". Murray Gell-Mann, meanwhile, has remarked that philosophy "muddies the waters and obscures [the theoretical physicist's] principal task, which is to find a coherent structure that works". He then added that having a philosophical bias may cause a physicist "to reject a good idea".
But such reactions misconstrue philosophy, however much they may have been triggered by the excesses of philosophers themselves. Scientists cannot avoid making judgements about what is real and what is not, and philosophical analysis seeks to expose and clarify this process.
I've also heard that science inclines its practitioners towards a specific philosophical position. Scientists, it is said, tend towards realism because it makes them better scientists - a conviction that has also influenced philosophers. When Ian Hacking, for example, once asked a physics colleague what he was doing, the physicist replied that he was "spraying photons". Impressed, Hacking wrote: "From that day forth I've been a scientific realist. As far as I'm concerned, if you can spray them, then they are real."
In his book "Faith, Science and Understanding", physicist-turned-Anglican-priest John Polkinghorne remarked that "virtually all scientists" - including himself - adhere to a brand of realism known as critical realism. A reviewer in "Physics World", who doubted Polkinghorne's bold assertion, later suggested that I poll readers, hoping to elicit information to settle the issue. I therefore carried out a survey in which I listed a number of different items and asked readers to say whether or not they considered them to be real things, or whether they were unsure ("Physics World" October 2001 p18). Having received more than 500 replies, the statistics do indeed cast doubt on Polkinghorne's claim....
Rest of password-required article can be found at:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/print/2002/apr/04/this-is-your-philosophy
Or maybe:
http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/2002/apr/04/this-is-your-philosophy
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Percy Bridgman: "It seems to me that there is a good deal of ballyhoo about scientific method. I venture to think that the people who talk most about it are the people who do least about it. Scientific method is what working scientists do, not what other people or even they themselves may say about it. No working scientist, when he plans an experiment in the laboratory, asks himself whether he is being properly scientific, nor is he interested in whatever method he may be using as method. When the scientist ventures to criticize the work of his fellow scientist, as is not uncommon, he does not base his criticism on such glittering generalities as failure to follow the 'scientific method,' but his criticism is specific, based on some feature characteristic of the particular situation. The working scientist is always too much concerned with getting down to brass tacks to be willing to spend his time on generalities. . . . . What appears to [the working scientist] as the essence of the situation is that he is not consciously following any prescribed course of action, but feels complete freedom to utilize any method or device whatever which in the particular situation before him seems likely to yield the correct answer. In his attack on his specific problem he suffers no inhibitions of precedent or authority, but is completely free to adopt any course that his ingenuity is capable of suggesting to him. No one standing on the outside can predict what the individual scientist will do or what method he will follow. In short, science is what scientists do, and there are as many scientific methods as there are individual scientists." (Reflections of a Physicist)
Peter Medawar: "Ask a scientist what he conceives the scientific method to be, and he will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn, because he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed, because he is wondering how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare. ... If the purpose of scientific methodology is to prescribe or expound a system of enquiry or even a code of practice for scientific behavior, then scientists seem to be able to get on very well without it. Most scientists receive no tuition in scientific method, but those who have been instructed perform no better as scientists than those who have not. Of what other branch of learning can it be said that it gives its proficients no advantage; that it need not be taught or, if taught, need not be learned?" (Induction and Intuition in Scientific Thought)
Ernst Mach: "The goal which it [physical science] has set itself is the simplest and most economical abstract expression of facts. When the human mind, with its limited powers, attempts to mirror in itself the rich life of the world, of which it itself is only a small part, and which it can never hope to exhaust, it has every reason for proceeding economically. In reality, the law always contains less than the fact itself, because it does not reproduce the fact as a whole but only in that aspect of it which is important for us, the rest being intentionally or from necessity omitted. In mentally separating a body from the changeable environment in which it moves, what we really do is to extricate a group of sensations on which our thoughts are fastened and which is of relatively greater stability than the others, from the stream of all our sensations. Suppose we were to attribute to nature the property of producing like effects in like circumstances; just these like circumstances we should not know how to find. Nature exists once only. Our schematic mental imitation alone produces like events." (The Economical Nature Of Physical Inquiry)
Henry J. Folse: "However, while Kuhn and like minded critics of the empiricist consensus effectively overthrew the consensus view that had dominated philosophy of science from the 1930's to the 60's, Kuhn's own alternative was never crowned its successor within philosophy of science. It is now generally recognized by most philosophers to be inadequate as an account of many of the features of science to which Kuhn himself called attention. Thus in the last forty years philosophy of science has gone from a field formerly dominated by a single 'received view' to an arena of volatile debate with no single dominant contender for a new acceptable model of scientific knowledge. This fact has made it one of the most lively and pivotal domains of philosophy, for the issues now occupying center stage in philosophy of science touch upon basic questions of epistemology, metaphysics, and axiology. Through these debates the nature of philosophy of science has changed tremendously from the attempt to build a formal model of an idealized perfect science quite apart from any historical account of what scientists really do, to the attempt to build a philosophically acceptable view of science based upon a detailed historical examination of the actual patterns of reasoning employed in concrete episodes in the advance of science. En route these discussions have called into question such basic presuppositions as the belief that there is some pattern of reasoning which justifies acceptance of scientific theories, that there is some methodology called 'the scientific method,' that science has anything at all to say about the nature of reality, and that science can be examined apart from the social, cultural context in which it actually evolves. Because of the central role that science plays in contemporary culture, these upheavals in philosophy of science have reverberated in a variety of disciplines including history, political science, sociology, art, religious studies, and other disciplines too numerous to name." (Introduction To Philosophy Of Science)
