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Reading Werner Heisenberg’s “Physics and Philosophy” (1958), and talking about it with an actual former particle physicist, Dylan Casey.

What weird stuff about reality does quantum physics imply? Is Heisenberg (of the Uncertainty Principle fame) right that we need to reject “metaphysical realism” based on this very well established scientific framework? The discussion ranges over the uncertainty principle, relativity, wave/particle duality, Pre-Socratic metaphysics, why Kant is wrong about space, and lots of very weird things.

You can read along with us here: http://www.scribd.com/doc/13499208/PHYSICS-AND-PHILOSOPHY-by-WERNER-HEISENBERG.

Plus, we spend far too much time talking about an article by Thomas Nagel about Intelligent Design; you can read that here: http://philosophy.fas.nyu.edu/docs/IO/1172/papa_132.pdf. And the blog post by Brian Leiter that got us talking about it is here: http://leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2009/12/thomas-nagel-jumps-the-shark.html.

End song: “Neutrino of Love,” written and sung by Dylan Casey, with backing and production by Mark back in 1997 or so (remixed and cleaned up just now). A different version appears on his Neutrino Sessions album.