Phenomenological Approaches to Physics

Abstract

AbstractThe relationship between physics and phenomenology is a blind spot of current literature in a twofold sense. First, while many phenomenologists work on the interface to psychology, the cognitive sciences, biology, artificial intelligence, etc., only very few engage in phenomenological reflections on physics. This is puzzling since, as we shall see below, Husserl and other classical phenomenologists have been quite clear on the significance of such an undertaking, stressing the central role physics plays among the natural sciences. Secondly, while philosophy of physics has emerged as an important sub-discipline of philosophy in the twentieth century, there is hardly any work that addresses the role of phenomenology for the development of modern physics or the philosophical interpretation of physical theories (with notable exceptions that will be discussed below). This is puzzling since, as we shall see below, the father of modern field theory, Hermann Weyl, was inspired by phenomenological considerations when formulating his gauge principle, and there is a long (although usually unnoticed) history of phenomenological motifs in interpretations of quantum mechanics. Section 15.1 addresses the question of how to interpret physical theories and how to estimate the relationship between mathematical models and physical reality. In Sect. 15.2, we shed light on the perspectivist features of Husserl’s philosophy of science and discuss how it relates to current versions of scientific perspectivism. Section 15.3 addresses how phenomenological ideas have influenced the development and interpretation of early modern physics. In Sect. 15.4, we discuss observer-dependence in modern physics and highlight phenomenological motifs in Wheeler’s conception of “observer-participancy.” Finally, Sect. 15.5 sheds light on phenomenological motifs in a novel interpretation of quantum mechanics, namely QBism, and emphasizes similarities between phenomenology and the program of reconstructing quantum mechanics, a program that currently enjoys popularity in the field of quantum foundations. We shall see that the worldviews delivered by phenomenology and physics might be closer than is commonly assumed.