Hilary Putnam

This is an excellent lecture by Hilary Putnam. This post is a follow-up to Lori's Been Researching the Cobweb


Of particular relevance to the discussion at 17 minutes 53 seconds of what constitutes an explanation, which is a mechanism which more or less reliably reproduces the observed phenomena, see Landau and Lifshitz' Mechanics.

The Variational mechanics of Lagrange and Hamilton, for example, reproduce a great many observed phenomena of classical mechanics, including the precession of tops and planets. Richard Feynman and others extended the use of the methods of Lagrange and Hamilton to the realm of quantum particles and were able to reproduce mechanically a great deal more.


But in neither case should we expect that the principle of least action will explain all phenomena including the minds of the men who made that abstraction. This is stated by Putnam, at 1 hour 1 minute 15 seconds and on the first page of Landau and Lifshitz' Mechanics:


... and explained on page 2:


The reason is on this guy's t-shirt:


I suppose he means "Don't be spanner in the works!" otherwise, ...


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