To repeat my example from there, to understand superconductivity it doesn’t help much to smash them into their components, even though it helps a lot for understanding atoms. A non-philosophical example from your list where people went to the “extremist” view for a little too long might be mental health before the rise of positive psychology.
Not sure if it’s “contra” your post. In physics there are effective theories and the Intentional Stance is an example of one, which is, indeed, a “low-energy” approximation. My point is not about energy level, but more about finding the limits of applicability to see the constituents better. For example in a control system it is hard to figure out the innards until you, say, open the feedback loop in some way, or find a regime where the the system goes into resonance, or saturates, etc.
Is this contra https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/aNaP8eCiKW7wZxpFt/philosophy-as-low-energy-approximation ?
To repeat my example from there, to understand superconductivity it doesn’t help much to smash them into their components, even though it helps a lot for understanding atoms. A non-philosophical example from your list where people went to the “extremist” view for a little too long might be mental health before the rise of positive psychology.
Not sure if it’s “contra” your post. In physics there are effective theories and the Intentional Stance is an example of one, which is, indeed, a “low-energy” approximation. My point is not about energy level, but more about finding the limits of applicability to see the constituents better. For example in a control system it is hard to figure out the innards until you, say, open the feedback loop in some way, or find a regime where the the system goes into resonance, or saturates, etc.