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> He might have changed the way a few scientists and a few more philosophers think about science but most people including most practising scientists don't thin
by jmcmichael 11y ago
> He might have changed the way a few scientists and a few more philosophers think about science but most people including most practising scientists don't think about such things at all. The general public, I suspect, isn't even aware that there is a 'way the world looked at science' much less that there is a different way of looking at it.
There's a word for the state of these scientists and laypeople: ignorance.
Edit to add some substance to the name-calling:
There's a certain perspective held by many scientists that the scientific method can and will describe the purposes and meaning behind every phenomena both natural and man-made that have any relevance or importance to our lives as humans. If those holding this perspective grant that valuable knowledge lies outside the ability of science to observe and explain, they tend to view it as irrelevant and frivolous. Those who hold this perspective tend to view philosophy as mere wordplay, and the idea of studying science from the perspective of philosophy (as Kuhn did) as pointless or an usurpation of their position at the top of the intellectual ladder.
Feynman embodied this attitude when he said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."
It's a belligerent and proud ignorance that puts a black stain on the practice of science today, and an attitude that threatens some of the most valuable academic disciplines in the humanities, to the detriment of our culture.
My brief statement above was meant to call attention to this belligerent ignorance and poke fun at it a little bit.
- vixen99 11y agoCan you offer a bit more than name calling. That's what you get mostly in the Guardian comment section and it's pretty depressing.
- jmcmichael 11y agoYes, updated. Sorry to have (hopefully temporarily) made this thread look like a Guardian comment section...
- conistonwater 11y ago> Feynman embodied this attitude when he said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Your comment still does not explain how philosophy of science should be useful to scientists. It would be much more convincing if it did.
- theoh 11y agoSee also Barnett Newman's use of the same metaphor in reference to aesthetics.
- mirimir 11y agoSelf-awareness is always a good thing, no? Kuhn's key point is that scientists (like many humans) tend to be herd animals. When you get results that are inconsistent with the public record, not to mention current dogma, there's a tendency to dig seriously for systematic errors. And when you start getting results that are consistent with the public record, you tend to get on with the writeup. Being aware of that stereotypic behavior is the first step in being free of it. No?
- jmcmichael 11y agoI attempted to address this above, in a reply to a sibling of your request.
- zornthewise 11y agoMy reading of Feynman is a little different: I think the point is that philosophy of science has only analysed history so far and has never by itself brought about a change in the way science is done. This is not to say that the philosophy is useless or that it will never influence science in the future - Feynman is just stating how things have been. Put another way, I simply don't see philosophy of science as it is helping someone do better science. I would be very interested if this were false.
- selimthegrim 11y agoFeynman had the luxury of working in a dynamic field - not one that had been stuck eating its own regurgitations and chewing its cud for hundreds of years and needed a fresh start, like physics in Newton's time.
- jules 11y agoThis is a popular view that philosophers have about scientists, but as usual it fails to mention how exactly philosophy of science has been or is to be useful to scientists. Ironically, science has been very influential in advancing the state of philosophy.
- mindcrime 11y agoThis is a popular view that philosophers have about scientists, but as usual it fails to mention how exactly philosophy of science has been or is to be useful to scientists. Wouldn't Karl Popper's work on emphasizing the importance of falsification be an example of how philosophy of science was useful to scientists?
- analog31 11y agoWhen did those ideas become widespread? My parents, both scientists educated in the 1950s, never heard of them. They followed a pretty simplistic notion of scientific methodology, that mainly revolved around intellectual honesty: Report everything that you observe, and be willing to change your beliefs when confronted with new information. I never heard of Popper or Kuhn until after I finished my science degree, and then, only in the context of debates about evolution versus creationism. But I don't know if I'm typical or not.
- mindcrime 11y agoWhen did those ideas become widespread? I honestly don't know. I'd always assumed that all of that happened well before I was born, but never bothered looking for any exact dates. It's just something I've always been exposed to, and have always taken the importance of falsification as a given. A quick search turns up this[1] from Wikipedia: "In work beginning in the 1930s, Popper gave falsifiability a renewed emphasis as a criterion of empirical statements in science." OTOH, the entry on Popper at Plato[2] says this: "However, in the 1970's a series of papers published by researchers such as Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum in particular revealed fundamental defects in Popper's formal definitions of verisimilitude." which suggest that his work had achieved enough signficance by the 1970's that other people were basing work on it (and in this case, perhaps refuting bits of it). [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability [2]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/
- nerd_stuff 11y agoI don't think what Feynman said was any more belligerent than kicking an unwanted guest out of one's house.
- JesperRavn 11y agoI agree with the sibling comment[0] on the interpretation of Feynman's quote. Also, rejecting the usefulness of philosophy of science doesn't imply accepting the view that the scientific method can and will describe the purposes and meaning behind every phenomena both natural and man-made that have any relevance or importance to our lives as humans. I think the following is a good summary of Feynman's lack of commitment to any philosophical viewpoint[1]: I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover. If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is, but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she's going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn't predecide what it is we're trying to do except to try to find out more about it. If you say your problem is, why do you find out more about it, if you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're going to get an answer to some deep philosophical question, you may be wrong. It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature, but I don't look at it [like that]. My interest in science is to simply find out about the world, and the more I find out the better it is, like, to find out. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176173 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176173 [1] http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0738201081&standardNoType=1&excerpt=true http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0738...
- mirimir 11y agoI don't know what Feynman was talking about, when he said that. Much philosophy of science is bullshit, in my considered opinion. But Kuhn's and Popper's work, for example, are not. And I'd be very surprised if Feynman claimed that they were. Also, maybe Feynman was just fucking with the interviewer. He was like a physics version of Lenny Bruce. But warmer, like Bill Clinton.