Disgrace indeed, to be caught in a metaphysical position! But it seems to me that in this matter I am just pursuing my profession of theoretical physics.
To my mind, the most fascinating thing about theorems of Bell’s type is that they provide a rare opportunity for an enterprise which can properly be called ‘experimental metaphysics
While we might expect the injection of philosophy into science to result in something less scientific, in fact, the opposite is true.
Experimental Metaphysics is the physicist's revenge on pure philosophy that consists in settling a deep existential question not from the power of sheer thought but mainly by testing it in a laboratory. It aims to put to the test the assumptions that one can make about physical theories, including the most fanciful ones (e.g., no-objectivism, no-reality, no-locality, etc.) It is the last step before Experimental Theology.
Asking nature for answers is regarded as the birth of modern physics, with Galileo back in the 17th century. The biggest such breakthrough however was Bell's approach to EPR, through inequalities whose violation would decide whether quantum mechanics is complete or not, a point which had been argued (mainly between Einstein and Bohr) with, at best, Gedankenexperiments. For that reason it was initially regarded as beyond physics, and more related to philosophy. Bell, however, brought back the question within the cogs and gears of the scientific method. An even more Gedanken Gedankenexperiment is that proposed by Wigner of observing the observer (his friend). For Wigner, does the observer collapse with his wavefunction when he makes his observation, without informing Wigner of his result? Or does he enter himself in the superposition with his observation awaiting for Wigner to do his own collapse? Wigner initially brought consciousness into the problem to get rid of superposing friends. Modern investigations of that problem,[1] in a way very similar to Bell, however managed to bring it back, albeit at an elevated level, to empirical verifications. The conclusions of such analyses make it necessary to have a field dedicated to the mind-boggling conclusions, which introduce Wigner bubbles of alternative realities, under the apt name of experimental metaphysics. The term was first used by Abner Shimony.[2]