How to Understand the Universe When You’re Stuck Inside of It

Lee Smolin explores the problem of understanding the universe from the perspective of being inside the universe, as well as the need for physicists to know philosophy.

​… This was great for the explosion of applications of quantum mechanics from the 1940s into the 1970s, through the establishment of the Standard Model, condensed matter physics and so forth. But then fundamental physics got stuck, and part of the reason we got stuck is we reached a set of problems on which you can’t make progress with this pragmatic, anti-foundational culture. I should make clear that those fields where you can assume we know the relevant laws, like condensed matter and astrophysics, continue to thrive. But if your goal is to discover new, deeper laws, you need to mix with philosophers again. And it has been happening much more. ...

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