The philosophers had successfully overthrown positivism and had a good understanding of the mathematical intricacies of quantum physics—but the physicists were still blinkered, walled off from philosophy and the developments there. They had no idea any of this had happened. While Einstein and Bohr’s generation was widely schooled in philosophy, the push toward specialization after World War II had taken its toll on the liberal arts education of the new crop of physicists. Academic departments had become Balkanized as they had grown in the postwar boom, and physicists, busy with enormous grants
...more
