"The scientists often have more unfettered imaginations than current philosophers do. Relativity theory came as a complete surprise to philosophers, and so did quantum mechanics, and so did other things"
About this Quote
Nozick is needling his own guild, and he does it with the cool precision of someone who knows exactly where the soft tissue is. Philosophers like to imagine themselves as the mind’s advance scouts, patrolling the frontier of the possible. Nozick flips the self-myth: when the 20th century’s biggest reality-warping ideas arrived, philosophy was standing on the platform squinting at the timetable.
The jab isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s a critique of intellectual domestication. “Unfettered imagination” is the key phrase, implying that philosophy, despite its rhetoric of radical questioning, often binds itself with inherited categories, professional incentives, and the comfort of arguments that stay legible inside seminar-room rules. Physics, meanwhile, gets to be weird because it’s disciplined by experiment rather than by what sounds metaphysically tasteful. Relativity and quantum mechanics weren’t just new answers; they were new constraints on what a coherent picture of the world could even be. Philosophers weren’t merely late to the party; the party changed the architecture.
The subtext is also a warning about philosophical hubris. If you think you can legislate the limits of possibility from the armchair, history will embarrass you. Nozick, writing in a period when analytic philosophy prized rigor and linguistic tidiness, is pressing for a bolder posture: philosophy should be porous to scientific upheaval and less confident that “common sense” is a reliable veto.
It’s a call to compete with reality, not just with other philosophers.
The jab isn’t anti-intellectual; it’s a critique of intellectual domestication. “Unfettered imagination” is the key phrase, implying that philosophy, despite its rhetoric of radical questioning, often binds itself with inherited categories, professional incentives, and the comfort of arguments that stay legible inside seminar-room rules. Physics, meanwhile, gets to be weird because it’s disciplined by experiment rather than by what sounds metaphysically tasteful. Relativity and quantum mechanics weren’t just new answers; they were new constraints on what a coherent picture of the world could even be. Philosophers weren’t merely late to the party; the party changed the architecture.
The subtext is also a warning about philosophical hubris. If you think you can legislate the limits of possibility from the armchair, history will embarrass you. Nozick, writing in a period when analytic philosophy prized rigor and linguistic tidiness, is pressing for a bolder posture: philosophy should be porous to scientific upheaval and less confident that “common sense” is a reliable veto.
It’s a call to compete with reality, not just with other philosophers.
Quote Details
| Topic | Science |
|---|
More Quotes by Robert
Add to List
