Edward Remler's
"Physics, Metaphysics, and Pedagogy"

A contemporary physicist's diagnosis of the problem of teaching physics to "poets", meaning people who cannot reasonably be expected to become physicists in order to understand what they should about physics. Is it a Peircean view? Not derived from Peirce, certainly, but here is Remler's conclusion:
The one thing that certainly can be done is to make students conscious of the viewpoints and problems discussed here. They should be told about the reality of physicists' supersensible reality. How it is perceived through mathematics and why its claims to reality are as valid and uniquely determined as those of the ordinary sort. They should be given a larger sense of what mathematics' role is in human thought so that they do not automatically assume that, since physics is writ in the language of mathematics, it necessarily provides an intrinsically impoverished or unnatural view of nature. They should be told of the grand concept of the world as the evolution of an idea, and of what this implies in terms of universal applicability of scientific law to all parts of existence.

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Queries, comments, and suggestions to
Joseph Ransdell -- Dept of Philosophy
Texas Tech University, Lubbock Texas 79409
joseph.ransdell@yahoo.com

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Page last modified in content June 30, 1998

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