Hmmmm
Philosopher/Scientists or Scientist/Philosophers is where we are here.
At the risk of boring TR3 to death (his "back" button must be dysfunctional amongst other things) may I quote Stephen Hawking from his “Brief History of Time.”
"Now, if you believe that the universe is not arbitrary, but is governed by definite laws, you ultimately have to combine the partial theories into a complete unified theory that will describe everything in the universe. But there is a fundamental paradox in the search for such a complete unified theory. The ideas about scientific theories outlined above assume we are rational beings who are free to observe the universe as we want and draw logical deductions from what we see. In such a scheme it is reasonable to suppose that we might progress ever closer to the laws that govern our universe. Yet if there really is a complete unified theory, it would also presumably determine our actions. And so the theory itself would determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine the outcome of our search for it! And why should it determine that we come to the right conclusions from the evidence? Might it not equally determine that we draw the wrong conclusion? Or no conclusion at all?”
I would be careful not to fall for the empirical or deterministic approach, Einstein, whose work provided the foundation for quantum physics would have nothing to do with the child of his research. Most of the great hypotheses and theories that underpin our modern science were the result of mind experiments, and moments of great inspiration, only able to be verified decades later when the technology was available.
Copernicus, Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Kant, Heisenburg, Hawking the list goes on and ALL of them swimming against the tide of what was known.
Were those theories/hypotheses philosophy? They could not be what we now call “science” as at the time nobody could then prove/disprove or reproduce the results other than through mind games with each other.
What has this got to do with the speed of thought, I dunno but I’ve got an open mind on it.
Religion, Voodoo, witchcraft, the occult call it what you will, but I believe we are all connected with the universe somehow and therefore with each other. As Icarus suggests the "speed" of thought may in fact be for all intents and purposes instantaneous across the "universe" whatever tha may be.
Empirical study may well tell us what is, and maybe how it is, going on from a mechanical or deterministic viewpoint with the measuring tools we currently have at our disposal but I am with KIFIS, it doesn’t yet tell us the whole story.