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It may be that my memory does not serve me well, but I think I got an impression from the history of the philosophy that once there is a field of philosophy tha

It may be that my memory does not serve me well, but I think I got an impression from the history of the philosophy that once there is a field of philosophy that actually starts solving problems, it very fast changes its name to something else than philosophy. For example[1], Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

colechristensen 10y ago
It seems more like the usage of the word 'philosophy' has gradually shifted to mean something very narrow, when at times it could have been used as a synonym for 'science'.
- JBiserkov 10y ago
  Indeed, see PhD
- milcron 10y ago
  My favorite definition: Philosophy is the practice of looking into questions without clear-cut answers.
  - woodandsteel 10y ago
    Philosophers disagree a lot in their specific definitions, but most definitions assume it is the study of the broadest and most general questions, like what is truth, what is reality, what is the good, and so on. Also, any particular field you study has philosophical assumptions, like about the reliability of sense data. The reason modern science is so fabulously successful is the philosophers who established it got rid of the supernaturalist assumptions of previous science, and added the assumption that reality is mathematically describable. What Smolin and Unger are saying is that the particular philosophical assumptions behind string theory and a lot of related physics are mistaken. This would seem to be at least possible.
  - naasking 10y ago
    > Philosophy is the practice of looking into questions without clear-cut answers. Indeed, or the practice of asking questions about the nature of questions, ie. what questions are meaningful, well-formed, yield knowledge, etc. in any given subject. When you understand the nature of the questions in a particular subject, then you're no longer practicing philosophy, you're gathering knowledge of that subject, ie. math, physics, chemistry, etc.
ende 10y ago
So basically philosophy as an incubator for new scientific field startups? I like that notion.
- auggierose 10y ago
  Yeah, I like it too :-) Philosophy has surely delivered unicorns: Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science! The question is, can Philosophy deliver another one?
  - JetSpiegel 10y ago
    But they don't even have the .com domain...
    - jinwoo68 10y ago
      http://www.philosophy.com http://www.philosophy.com
      - Eupolemos 10y ago
        That was profoundly disheartening.
  - robterrell 10y ago
    Economics too! i.e. the "worldly philosophers".
    - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
      You mean the field famous for predicting six of the last five recessions?
      - damienkatz 10y ago
        You mean the field that predicted the last 80 of 8 recessions.
RodericDay 10y ago
There's an interesting back and forth with Boltzmann and Mach that touches on this: > Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases seemed to presuppose the reality of atoms and molecules, but almost all German philosophers and many scientists like Ernst Mach and the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald disbelieved their existence. During the 1890s Boltzmann attempted to formulate a compromise position which would allow both atomists and anti-atomists to do physics without arguing over atoms. His solution was to use Hertz's theory that atoms were Bilder, that is, models or pictures. Atomists could think the pictures were the real atoms while the anti-atomists could think of the pictures as representing a useful but unreal model, but this did not fully satisfy either group. Furthermore, Ostwald and many defenders of "pure thermodynamics" were trying hard to refute the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics because of Boltzmann's assumptions about atoms and molecules and especially statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. > Around the turn of the century, Boltzmann's science was being threatened by another philosophical objection. Some physicists, including Mach's student, Gustav Jaumann, interpreted Hertz to mean that all electromagnetic behavior is continuous, as if there were no atoms and molecules, and likewise as if all physical behavior were ultimately electromagnetic. This movement around 1900 deeply depressed Boltzmann since it could mean the end of his kinetic theory and statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. > After Mach's resignation in Vienna in 1901, Boltzmann returned there and decided to become a philosopher himself to refute philosophical objections to his physics, but he soon became discouraged again. In 1904 at a physics conference in St. Louis most physicists seemed to reject atoms and he was not even invited to the physics section. Rather, he was stuck in a section called "applied mathematics", he violently attacked philosophy, especially on allegedly Darwinian grounds but actually in terms of Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics that people inherited bad philosophy from the past and that it was hard for scientists to overcome such inheritance. > In 1905 Boltzmann corresponded extensively with the Austro-German philosopher Franz Brentano with the hope of gaining a better mastery of philosophy, apparently, so that he could better refute its relevancy in science, but he became discouraged about this approach as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann#Philosophy
Bromskloss 10y ago
That's my thinking too. When trying to define what philosophy is, I have settled on this: Philosophy is the reasoning about poorly defined things, using similarly fuzzy steps. This is not a value judgement. Once we get a better grip on an area, then, finding more proper definitions for its concepts, we branch it off as a subject of its own.
- andybak 10y ago
  And there. You are doing philosophy.
  - Bromskloss 10y ago
    Yes, I would say so.
Double_Cast 10y ago
> The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that they were useless. He was like an explorer looking for a territory to the north of him, starting with the assumption that it was located to the south. > And since his work became the map used by generations of future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction as well. http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  I have a lot of respect for PG, but boy, is he off track on that. Aristotle was highly specific and highly empirical. His ethics, for instance, is an elaborate study of the various ways individual go right or wrong in their decisions. His politics was based on extensive studies of the constitutions and political histories of nearly a hundred Greek states. And of course there was his biology, based on empirical studies of over a hundred different animal species. And as for his physics, according to this astounding article by Carlo Rovelli (yes, that Carlo Rovelli), his physics is accurate for the phenomena he was studying. Rovelli even converts his ideas into equations. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf
rdtsc 10y ago
> For example[1], Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics. That is a good example. I was trying to think of others since then. That was 500 years ago or so. What are some more recent ones for physics? I imagine if logic is considered part of philosophy, perhaps boolean and propositional logic had a hand in helping computing... Then if ecology or sociology is considered I can see how philosophical ideas about class, society, environment would be incorporated into practical fields or be used to start societal transformations (Marxism perhaps?). But I can't think much for physics recently? I have read and seen known physicists dable in and use philosphy to explain what they accomplished or observed. Bohr, for example, was fond of Kierkegaard. It would be good to have examples of philosophers who changed the course of physics.
- akvadrako 10y ago
  It's surprisingly recent, but much of our modern understanding of what the scientific method is comes from Karl Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Popper_and_Kuhn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#P...
lobster_johnson 10y ago
That happened just once, though (as far as I know). "Natural philosophy" was a catch-all term for anything that involved the study of nature, before everything was formalized into categories such as physics and biology, and we decided "science" was a better, snappier term for it. The word "scientist" was only invented in 1834. The scientist who coined it, William Whewell, also thought up "phycisist" and a whole bunch of other modern terms. [1] Interestingly enough, "naturalist" still survives as a legit term, as does "natural history". [1] http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Whewell http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Wh...

colechristensen 10y ago

It seems more like the usage of the word 'philosophy' has gradually shifted to mean something very narrow, when at times it could have been used as a synonym for 'science'.

JBiserkov 10y ago
Indeed, see PhD
milcron 10y ago
My favorite definition: Philosophy is the practice of looking into questions without clear-cut answers.
- woodandsteel 10y ago
  Philosophers disagree a lot in their specific definitions, but most definitions assume it is the study of the broadest and most general questions, like what is truth, what is reality, what is the good, and so on. Also, any particular field you study has philosophical assumptions, like about the reliability of sense data. The reason modern science is so fabulously successful is the philosophers who established it got rid of the supernaturalist assumptions of previous science, and added the assumption that reality is mathematically describable. What Smolin and Unger are saying is that the particular philosophical assumptions behind string theory and a lot of related physics are mistaken. This would seem to be at least possible.
- naasking 10y ago
  > Philosophy is the practice of looking into questions without clear-cut answers. Indeed, or the practice of asking questions about the nature of questions, ie. what questions are meaningful, well-formed, yield knowledge, etc. in any given subject. When you understand the nature of the questions in a particular subject, then you're no longer practicing philosophy, you're gathering knowledge of that subject, ie. math, physics, chemistry, etc.

ende 10y ago

So basically philosophy as an incubator for new scientific field startups? I like that notion.

auggierose 10y ago
Yeah, I like it too :-) Philosophy has surely delivered unicorns: Mathematics, Physics, Biology, Chemistry, Computer Science! The question is, can Philosophy deliver another one?
- JetSpiegel 10y ago
  But they don't even have the .com domain...
  - jinwoo68 10y ago
    http://www.philosophy.com http://www.philosophy.com
    - Eupolemos 10y ago
      That was profoundly disheartening.
- robterrell 10y ago
  Economics too! i.e. the "worldly philosophers".
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    You mean the field famous for predicting six of the last five recessions?
    - damienkatz 10y ago
      You mean the field that predicted the last 80 of 8 recessions.

RodericDay 10y ago

There's an interesting back and forth with Boltzmann and Mach that touches on this: > Boltzmann's kinetic theory of gases seemed to presuppose the reality of atoms and molecules, but almost all German philosophers and many scientists like Ernst Mach and the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald disbelieved their existence. During the 1890s Boltzmann attempted to formulate a compromise position which would allow both atomists and anti-atomists to do physics without arguing over atoms. His solution was to use Hertz's theory that atoms were Bilder, that is, models or pictures. Atomists could think the pictures were the real atoms while the anti-atomists could think of the pictures as representing a useful but unreal model, but this did not fully satisfy either group. Furthermore, Ostwald and many defenders of "pure thermodynamics" were trying hard to refute the kinetic theory of gases and statistical mechanics because of Boltzmann's assumptions about atoms and molecules and especially statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. > Around the turn of the century, Boltzmann's science was being threatened by another philosophical objection. Some physicists, including Mach's student, Gustav Jaumann, interpreted Hertz to mean that all electromagnetic behavior is continuous, as if there were no atoms and molecules, and likewise as if all physical behavior were ultimately electromagnetic. This movement around 1900 deeply depressed Boltzmann since it could mean the end of his kinetic theory and statistical interpretation of the second law of thermodynamics. > After Mach's resignation in Vienna in 1901, Boltzmann returned there and decided to become a philosopher himself to refute philosophical objections to his physics, but he soon became discouraged again. In 1904 at a physics conference in St. Louis most physicists seemed to reject atoms and he was not even invited to the physics section. Rather, he was stuck in a section called "applied mathematics", he violently attacked philosophy, especially on allegedly Darwinian grounds but actually in terms of Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics that people inherited bad philosophy from the past and that it was hard for scientists to overcome such inheritance. > In 1905 Boltzmann corresponded extensively with the Austro-German philosopher Franz Brentano with the hope of gaining a better mastery of philosophy, apparently, so that he could better refute its relevancy in science, but he became discouraged about this approach as well. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann#Philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_Boltzmann#Philosophy

Bromskloss 10y ago

That's my thinking too. When trying to define what philosophy is, I have settled on this: Philosophy is the reasoning about poorly defined things, using similarly fuzzy steps. This is not a value judgement. Once we get a better grip on an area, then, finding more proper definitions for its concepts, we branch it off as a subject of its own.

andybak 10y ago
And there. You are doing philosophy.
- Bromskloss 10y ago
  Yes, I would say so.

Double_Cast 10y ago

> The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that they were useless. He was like an explorer looking for a territory to the north of him, starting with the assumption that it was located to the south. > And since his work became the map used by generations of future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction as well. http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

woodandsteel 10y ago
I have a lot of respect for PG, but boy, is he off track on that. Aristotle was highly specific and highly empirical. His ethics, for instance, is an elaborate study of the various ways individual go right or wrong in their decisions. His politics was based on extensive studies of the constitutions and political histories of nearly a hundred Greek states. And of course there was his biology, based on empirical studies of over a hundred different animal species. And as for his physics, according to this astounding article by Carlo Rovelli (yes, that Carlo Rovelli), his physics is accurate for the phenomena he was studying. Rovelli even converts his ideas into equations. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf

rdtsc 10y ago

> For example[1], Newton's 1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy later became classified as a book of physics. That is a good example. I was trying to think of others since then. That was 500 years ago or so. What are some more recent ones for physics? I imagine if logic is considered part of philosophy, perhaps boolean and propositional logic had a hand in helping computing... Then if ecology or sociology is considered I can see how philosophical ideas about class, society, environment would be incorporated into practical fields or be used to start societal transformations (Marxism perhaps?). But I can't think much for physics recently? I have read and seen known physicists dable in and use philosphy to explain what they accomplished or observed. Bohr, for example, was fond of Kierkegaard. It would be good to have examples of philosophers who changed the course of physics.

akvadrako 10y ago
It's surprisingly recent, but much of our modern understanding of what the scientific method is comes from Karl Popper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#Popper_and_Kuhn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_scientific_method#P...

lobster_johnson 10y ago

That happened just once, though (as far as I know). "Natural philosophy" was a catch-all term for anything that involved the study of nature, before everything was formalized into categories such as physics and biology, and we decided "science" was a better, snappier term for it. The word "scientist" was only invented in 1834. The scientist who coined it, William Whewell, also thought up "phycisist" and a whole bunch of other modern terms. [1] Interestingly enough, "naturalist" still survives as a legit term, as does "natural history". [1] http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Whewell http://etymonline.com/index.php?allowed_in_frame=0&search=Wh...