« On (religious) freedom in Locke and Hume on Agricola, | Main | Locke's Redefinition of Religion (Or on the Origin of Libertarianism) »

04/30/2015

Comments

Feed You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Aaron Garrett

It's like when someone says a paper is "rich". The positive is that they often mean "full of good stuff". The negative is they no doubt also mean "difficult to digest and causing whatever is the intellectual equivalent of heartburn".

John Protevi

FWIW, I'm convinced I would not have been able to add so many different aspects of the social, earth, and life sciences to my work if I had been in a philosophy department. I'm acutely aware just how close to dilettantism I go (if not right over the line sometimes), but hey, I'm not going to regret the freedom I've had by not being locked into narrow disciplinary registers.

Mark Behets

Eric, I think serendipity brought me yesterday evening to the discovery of a web of connections between four elements that are present in your blog above: 1) the author (you), 2) the importance of philosophy for physics, 3) Einstein and 4) Spinoza.

In the centre of the web sits: Erik Verlinde, professor in theoretical physics, who:

1.will be a colleague of you at the University of Amsterdam.

2.has identical ideas about the link between philosophy and physics as expressed in your quotes above from Mauldin and Einstein – and which are shared by you I presume (you can find his ideas –in Dutch- via this link ) .

3. presented last month the formulas of his new gravity theory, which has the same paradigma changing implications for understanding the concept of gravity as Einstein’s General Relativity theory published exactly 100 years ago (you can find the presentation –in English- on YouTube via this link ).

4. won the Dutch Spinoza-Prize in 2011 and got his PhD under the promotorship of professor Gerard ‘t Hooft, presently working at… the Spinoza Institute. Professor ‘t Hooft is one of the rare physicists who is convinced of determinism, like Spinoza was.

All pure coincidence of course. Or is there a deeper causal level explaining the connections? Seems to me a question for a philosopher :-)

1 http://www.uva.nl/binaries/content/assets/uva/nl/nieuws-en-agenda/in-gesprek-met/in-gespek-met-erik-verlinde.pdf?1382444997794

2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTIeJ-asLao

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Working...
Your comment could not be posted. Error type:
Your comment has been saved. Comments are moderated and will not appear until approved by the author. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Working...

Post a comment

Comments are moderated, and will not appear until the author has approved them.

Your Information

(Name and email address are required. Email address will not be displayed with the comment.)

Here's a link to my past blogging (and discussions involving me) at: New APPS.

Categories

Blog powered by Typepad