#SoCaltech: Edward Speer

“When you say you study philosophy, a lot of times people just immediately think of a grizzled old graybeard writing about the meaning of life or whatever, but it’s really more connected to science than people realize.

Every modern field of study is connected to philosophy in some way, and philosophy really acts as a guiding light to new fields of research and discovery. In the time of Aristotle or Plato, all of the things that we talk about as natural science today—they were philosophy then. Philosophy kind of gives birth to these new fields, and in a place like Caltech, it really plays a major role.

I've gotten a chance to look at the philosophy of quantum mechanics, the philosophy of electromagnetism. Those fields are trying to make real progress in what the scientific picture of the world is. In quantum mechanics, we don't have a clear picture of what's going on, of what the theory posits about the world. We have more of a mathematical formula. One side of science is saying, ‘What can we compute about the world? What can we predict?” And philosophy is asking, “Why do we trust our scientific theories, and what do they say about the physical world around us?” And I think that's an incredibly valuable side of the coin to look at.”

Edward Speer is graduating this June with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy and computer science. His philosophy thesis was an ethics paper on algorithmic fairness, which he co-authored with a large language model; he accompanied that with a meta-paper analysis of the success of that collaboration. Speer was a starter on Caltech’s baseball team all four of his years as an undergrad and was recently named one of the Institute’s Sportspersons of the Year. He is also recipient of the Gordon Mcclure Memorial Communications Prize and the Sanpietro Travel Prize.

#SoCaltech is an occasional series celebrating the diverse individuals who give Caltech its spirit of excellence, ambition, and ingenuity. Know someone we should profile? Send nominations to magazine@caltech.edu.