> On Sep 29, 2014, at 6:28 PM, Howard Pattee <hpat...@roadrunner.com> wrote: > >> Goble: I think the ultimately problem is that most physicists (like most >> scientists) are nominalists and thus to make a realist claim requires >> knowing what the singulars are. Yet most physicists donât think they know >> the singulars. This leads to problems for a nominalist that a scholastic >> realist like Peirce doesnât face. >> >> Now I think physicists would do well to jettison nominalism. > > HP: To get a fairer picture of how physicists think, please peruse this > survey <http://arxiv.org/pdf/1301.1069v1.pdf>.
I’d seen that before. While it’s a great guide to interpretations of quantum mechanics it really doesn’t address the nominalism issue. There were some surprises when I first read it - mainly that Bohmian mechanics have completely fallen out of favor. Back when I was in school it was still a notable theory, albeit one few followed. I expected far more people to pick the Everett interpretation as well. It did touch briefly on the idealist vs realist question with question 9. However that really didn’t get at the issue of nominalism. Although as the authors noted the options weren’t well defined here. I wonder how many physicists are familiar with terms like ontic or epistemic enough to understand how they are applied. Still that’s a great link to share. I do wish there was one on nominalism.
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