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It's nice to see Kuhn get a shout out; just occasionally I wish that the HN community at large was as well-informed on philosophy (and history) of science as we

It's nice to see Kuhn get a shout out; just occasionally I wish that the HN community at large was as well-informed on philosophy (and history) of science as we apparently are on all manner of technical topics. In fact one of the things that annoyed me about the original article was its complete lack of acknowledgment* that there are, you know, actual philosophers of science who might have thought about this issue before. As an aside, I do think it's worth mentioning that the propositions: > it's simply not the case, however robust the scientific results, that you have direct access to the 'pure nature of the world in itself'. and > There is no thought independent of the language we use to represent the world are really completely separate. I heartily disagree with the second (Wittgenstein?), and heartily agree with the first (any philosopher who's not a naive realist?) :) --- * Martin Rees is a well informed guy, and I'm sure he knows what philosophy of science is and has maybe even read some of it, but apparently he didn't choose to mention it. Sure, maybe that would be getting a bit too heavy for The Atlantic, but still... grrrrr...

Emma_Goldman 9y ago
They are separate in the sense that one can believe the first and not the second, as you do, but not in the sense that they have no connection. The second is, albeit crudely put here, a common starting point for reaching the first. And yes, I think Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is the most profound book that I have ever read. My view of the world was transformed upon reading it, though it took a couple of years to properly digest. I agree that a lot of the tech community is neither well read in philosophy (or the humanities in general for that matter), nor believes that they should be. Sometimes that creates wonderfully naive attempts to think of philosophy as one would code, but in general, it leads to a really one-dimensional view of the social world.
- libraryofbabel 9y ago
  It's true. But I do get the sense that at least the Hacker News community is more curious about and open to philosophy and the humanities than the tech world on average, and certainly more so than other online tech communities that I enjoy not reading (Slashdot, Reddit, etc.). Of course there is the usual subset of people who think all work in the humanities is either gibberish or part of some sort of monolithic vast Stalinist-identity-politics conspiracy, and a much larger number of well-meaning but naive people who seem to think they can resolve big social, historical, and economic questions much as they would debug a piece of Javascript. But time and again I'm genuinely surprised by the kinds of things that make it to the front page, and by how the comments often go deeper than the original article. There was even a sub-thread on this thread where people were bringing up Foucault's The Order of Things. Not bad for comments on a piece of naive pop-philosophy.

Emma_Goldman 9y ago

They are separate in the sense that one can believe the first and not the second, as you do, but not in the sense that they have no connection. The second is, albeit crudely put here, a common starting point for reaching the first. And yes, I think Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is the most profound book that I have ever read. My view of the world was transformed upon reading it, though it took a couple of years to properly digest. I agree that a lot of the tech community is neither well read in philosophy (or the humanities in general for that matter), nor believes that they should be. Sometimes that creates wonderfully naive attempts to think of philosophy as one would code, but in general, it leads to a really one-dimensional view of the social world.

libraryofbabel 9y ago
It's true. But I do get the sense that at least the Hacker News community is more curious about and open to philosophy and the humanities than the tech world on average, and certainly more so than other online tech communities that I enjoy not reading (Slashdot, Reddit, etc.). Of course there is the usual subset of people who think all work in the humanities is either gibberish or part of some sort of monolithic vast Stalinist-identity-politics conspiracy, and a much larger number of well-meaning but naive people who seem to think they can resolve big social, historical, and economic questions much as they would debug a piece of Javascript. But time and again I'm genuinely surprised by the kinds of things that make it to the front page, and by how the comments often go deeper than the original article. There was even a sub-thread on this thread where people were bringing up Foucault's The Order of Things. Not bad for comments on a piece of naive pop-philosophy.