Ayn Rand? Are you serious? The woman was a demagogue, a hypocrite, and a racist homophobe among her other charming qualities. Her "philosophy" of selfishness and greed was based on a worldview of hatred, suspicion, and class warfare, and even then is self-contradictory in many ways and completely meritless in every way. Rand's legacy is one of rationalization for the misguided, unethical, immoral actions of self-centered jackasses who all think they are the ubermensch. The reason she is completely ignored is because she was a horrible human being, who did nothing but make the world a worse place.

You should read her book "Philosophy who needs it".

I agree that Descartes, Hume, and Kant were wrong. However, modern scientists are not influenced by them. Their own views are much closer to Pragmatism (which is not surprising given that two of the three founders of Pragmatism, namely Peirce and James, were professional scientists).

Popper/Kuhn are both derivatives of Kant and very popular in physics when physicists grasp for a philosophy to justify their epistemology. Mach, also a Kantian, was Einstein's pole star but to Einstein's credit defended realism contra Mach's ideas.

That's because they haven't studied philosophy. I have a background in the sciences, and what I observed is that, in terms of how they think when they are actually doing science, as opposed to explaining it to people who are not scientists, they work out of a set of assumptions pretty much the same as Pragmatism.

I agree that Pragmatism is also fairly common in the sciences. But I don't considered Pragmatism to be a philosophy, it is a rejection of principles on principle so it is a dead-end. What is "shut-up and calculate" if not Pragmatism which has dominated physics for 100 years and has run its course. By holding philosophy in disdain and not studying it the physicists leave themselves vulnerable (due to ignorance) and absorb the bad philosophies I mentioned by osmosis.

> But I don't considered Pragmatism to be a philosophy, it is a rejection of principles on principle so it is a dead-end.

Huh? Philosophy books all list Pragmatism as a major philosophy, and it is far more elaborate than that. "Shut up and calculate" is not at all what the philosophies of Dewey, Peirce and James are about, it is far more elaborate.

>By holding philosophy in disdain and not studying it the physicists leave themselves vulnerable (due to ignorance) and absorb the bad philosophies I mentioned by osmosis.

I am referring to how they actually practice science, not their possibly quite inaccurate philosophical explanations of what they are doing. I am sure you are familiar with the phenomenon of someone loudly claiming they follow a certain set of principles, but then when you observe them you see they are actually doing something quite different.

What I am saying is that if you observe how scientists actually do science, it fits the philosophical principles of Pragmatism, whether the scientists realize it or not. And I am saying that as someone with a background in both the sciences and philosophy.