BEYOND "SHUT UP AND CALCULATE": WHY PHYSICS NEEDS THREE PERSPECTIVES
Ricardo de la Flor
Abstract
This article proposes a conceptual partition of physics into three autonomous epistemic perspectives: observational data, relations between data, and interpretation. The distinction is simple, almost obvious, yet its application dissolves persistent problems in modern physics without altering any equation, method, or theory. The relational perspective—concerned solely with predicting outcomes—is emancipated from the interpretive perspective, which seeks underlying mechanisms and meaning. This separation resolves the realism-instrumentalism debate by granting each position its proper domain, dissolves the vacuum catastrophe by recognizing that relations are valid only within their empirically confirmed limits, dissolves renormalization's conflict between efficacy and meaninglessness by assigning explanation to the interpretive perspective, and dissolves the quantum measurement problem by showing that wave function collapse follows from the probabilistic method itself rather than from any ontological or subjective feature. The article also introduces the concept of "half-truths" to diagnose how errors propagate when false ideas are fused with true ones. Ultimately, the three-perspective partition is presented not as optional but as analytically necessary for clarifying conceptual confusion in physics.