This is a bit of a giant leap. Scientific advances rely on many many many previous works, just look at the references. I fail to see the relevance of singling one out.
(That's in the site guidelines, by the way: "Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)
This declining relevance is true of other scientific works as well, but that is rarely touched upon. I suppose in some sense my comment expressed my annoyance that only philosophical roots are rediscovered every now and then.
It lasted up until the 1950s or so, and then philosophers started to fall behind. There has also be a substantial decline in math education for philosophers. Both Russell and Quine contributed directly to the foundations of mathematics, for instance. Even Kripke made substantial contributions to modal logic and semantic paradoxes. Nowadays you'll have to look very hard to even find a substantial contribution of a philosopher in logic, even though that's historically the mathematical discipline they know best.
As for the philosophical ideas without backing them up. People always grab some philosopher who had an idea and point out the "early roots", but they conveniently neglect the fact that simultaneously hundreds of other philosophers had patently absurd ideas as well. Even within philosophy there is a huge business based entirely on selection bias. People quote Aristotle as authoritative source, but of course only ever those parts of his work that remotely make sense. Democrit's theory of atoms is another typical example. It barely made sense at his time, and only so in opposition to other nonsense invented by "nature" philosophers then, yet he's misquoted as the inventor of the modern atom theory in every second slide show about chemistry.
But it seems equally valid to consider him a mathematician who knew philosophy. In which case, you could just as well frame the argument as mathematicians and scientists no longer have a good understanding of philosophy and are therefore incapable of contributing to the philosophy of their field.
And there are a few philosophers, such as Tim Maudlin, who know the science well enough to persue its philosophical questions. Despite these exceptions, I think it is not unreasonable to ask if 21st. century academic philosophy has chosen to turn away from the philosophical issues of 21st. century fundamental science.
No-one is stopping philosophers from contributing to science.
I see what you're saying. If Einstein attributes his thinking to Hume's influence, nobody can deny it. That's true of admissions in a court of law, however, our understanding of how scientific ideas are generated lacks the same certainty. Personal reflection is no guarantee of insight into the formation of ideas.
Einstein's acknowledgement of Hume as an intellectual predecessor tells us he admires Hume. It doesn't tell us where Einstein's own thoughts came from. Our knowledge of neurology isn't advanced enough to draw that conclusion.
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/there-is-no-such-...
Dang says "That's as solid evidence of a link as could exist."
I don't think it is the most solid evidence that could exist.
We don't even know how theories are formed in the mind, and we don't know the data format used by the brain. One day, we might be able to observe that empirically, in the same way we can examine source code versions of computer software in order to make informed statements about the aetiology of forked code. Today, we can't do that.
We can only guess at the origins of people's thoughts, and when the thoughts come from our own selves, no advantage or insight is conferred. That is considered in the Scientific American essay I linked to above. Do you have any constructive criticism to offer about that essay?
Einstein noted the limitations of this ontological discussion as well, in the preface clause of his remarks to Besso "In so far as I can be aware, the immediate influence of D Hume on me was greater."
My point is that Einstein's awareness, like your own and my own awareness of where our own thoughts come from, is slim. That's an entirely different thing to wanting to associate ourselves and our ideas with great figures in history. On that point, Einstein and I both know that great minds think alike.