The point is probably that traditional philosophy, which largely ignores physics theories like quantum mechanics, can't be taken seriously as a way of understand the nature of reality.GaryG48 wrote:“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”
I think the point is that traditional philosophy which tried to answer all questions has been replaced by modern science. Probably got that right. But, since the book is almost completely philosophy of science, philosophy is far from dead.
Actually, that sounds a bit poetic for Feynman. That statement is more a way of translating the path-integral formulation into words.GaryG48 wrote: “According to Feynman, a system has not just one history but every possible history.”
Now, that certainly sounds like something Feynman would say but, since there are no formal references in this book, there is no easy way to know for sure.
Actually, there are (at least) three different ways of expressing the equations of quantum mechanics: matrices / Hilbert spaces, operators / differential equations, and path integrals / sum-over-histories. However, they are all mathematically equivalent, which implies that the correctness of one implies the correctness of the others.Jim Watters wrote: The way I understood Feyman's sum-over-histories (Path Integral) approach, which has been scientifically proven correct in so many ways, is his thought experiment of the standard double-slit experiment:
However, there's definite value in having multiple mathematical representations. From a technical standpoint, different formulations are more helpful in modeling different physical situations. Philosophically, each mathematical structure provides a different perspective of the physical world.