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Should we not study old scientists because they had no idea about the concepts we have found recently? Should we no longer study old politics because their clim

Should we not study old scientists because they had no idea about the concepts we have found recently? Should we no longer study old politics because their climate was different? Should old tactics be disregarded because they used different, weaker weapons than us? Should old art be discarded because they used older theories and didn't understand perspective like we do? No.

r3trohack3r 4y ago
To steel man this, in every science class I’ve taken, we read text books. They covered a massive amount of material from an innumerable number of thinkers. In every philosophy class I’ve taken, we read individual books by individual thinkers. Perhaps everyone reading Plato first hand isn’t necessary? The middle ground is probably currant books - that track the evolution of thinking over time. My favorite example is From Atomos to Atom. I’ve never seen anything like that in a science class.
- davidivadavid 4y ago
  The term "covered" does a lot of work here. The thing with science is that it's generally considered more practical than philosophy, and people are content with learning a bunch of pre-packaged recipes to solve pre-packaged problems (use F = ma to solve that inclined plane problem). But try asking the average student what F = ma actually means a bit deeper than just how they would apply it and you'll see how much the topic is "covered." Consider that the concepts of force and mass themselves are mostly left unexplained. Or that people have no idea what "energy" is. They're models of reality that are not taught as such, because we're happy with teaching future engineers a bunch of recipes to learn by rote as long as they "work". So I remain unconvinced of the proposition that philosophy should be taught the same way. In that respect it's closer to science and the inherent doubt that comes with the scientific method — even though, similarly, there's a lot of dogmatic "philosophy" (think Marxism).
  - r3trohack3r 4y ago
    I think you missed the whole “currents” bit. I’d put reading Plato on par with reading The Skeptical Chymist or John Dalton’s Chemical Philosophy. I think it’s a miss primary sources like that are absent from most undergraduate degrees in science - they reveal a lot about what science really is. But building an entire undergraduate curriculum on nothing but those primary sources? There’s just too much material and so many of those constructs have failed to accurately describe reality. To use Marxism as an example, Main Currents of Marxism is probably on par with From Atomos to Atom. Both Science and Philosophy could benefit from teaching from currents vs. primary sources (philosophy) and compilations of “facts” (science).
PeterisP 4y ago
We certainly do not study Newtonian physics based on Newton's writing, and any physics teacher who would use Newton's original argument and Newton's notation would be considered a very bad teacher simply because we have developed far better ways to express the same thing, the original argument is needlessly convoluted and original notation is horribly awkward - future work has improved on that. This is not because "they had no idea about the concepts we have found recently?" - relativity and other non-Newtonian phyics is a different issue - it's about having the best, most accurate represenation of the same concept, and it is very unlikely that the very first attempt in defining a concept is the best result possible. We can make (and have made) much better summaries of Newtonian physics than Newton did, better definitions of Newton's principles than those which he wrote, when we teach Newton's laws of motion, we never use the original wording but an improved paraphrase of them. The original has no value for the learner (other than a historical curiosity) because the revised versions are simply better expressions of the same thing. Why don't we require the same thing from philosophy?
- prego_xo 4y ago
  I'm not saying we should use those kinds of old practices as a basis for our modern ones, but rather that it's more healthy for new and developing [scientists/artists/philosophers/etc] to study the history and learn about the steps it took to get to our modern understanding. We can't expect to advance further without knowing the foundation on which our understanding is built. Learning about what it took to advance in the past is how we create a mindset that lets us advance now; we can't begin to think critically without knowing our wrongs and our rights in tandem.
- denton-scratch 4y ago
  > simply because we have developed far better ways to express the same thing To be fair, the main reason we don't study Newton's ideas in their original form is that he wrote in Latin. The second is that he went to rather extreme lengths to make his writing obscure; he was very possessive of his ideas, and didn't want other philosophers pinching them. Read the Newton Leibniz correspondence.
- billfruit 4y ago

r3trohack3r 4y ago

To steel man this, in every science class I’ve taken, we read text books. They covered a massive amount of material from an innumerable number of thinkers. In every philosophy class I’ve taken, we read individual books by individual thinkers. Perhaps everyone reading Plato first hand isn’t necessary? The middle ground is probably currant books - that track the evolution of thinking over time. My favorite example is From Atomos to Atom. I’ve never seen anything like that in a science class.

davidivadavid 4y ago
The term "covered" does a lot of work here. The thing with science is that it's generally considered more practical than philosophy, and people are content with learning a bunch of pre-packaged recipes to solve pre-packaged problems (use F = ma to solve that inclined plane problem). But try asking the average student what F = ma actually means a bit deeper than just how they would apply it and you'll see how much the topic is "covered." Consider that the concepts of force and mass themselves are mostly left unexplained. Or that people have no idea what "energy" is. They're models of reality that are not taught as such, because we're happy with teaching future engineers a bunch of recipes to learn by rote as long as they "work". So I remain unconvinced of the proposition that philosophy should be taught the same way. In that respect it's closer to science and the inherent doubt that comes with the scientific method — even though, similarly, there's a lot of dogmatic "philosophy" (think Marxism).
- r3trohack3r 4y ago
  I think you missed the whole “currents” bit. I’d put reading Plato on par with reading The Skeptical Chymist or John Dalton’s Chemical Philosophy. I think it’s a miss primary sources like that are absent from most undergraduate degrees in science - they reveal a lot about what science really is. But building an entire undergraduate curriculum on nothing but those primary sources? There’s just too much material and so many of those constructs have failed to accurately describe reality. To use Marxism as an example, Main Currents of Marxism is probably on par with From Atomos to Atom. Both Science and Philosophy could benefit from teaching from currents vs. primary sources (philosophy) and compilations of “facts” (science).

PeterisP 4y ago

We certainly do not study Newtonian physics based on Newton's writing, and any physics teacher who would use Newton's original argument and Newton's notation would be considered a very bad teacher simply because we have developed far better ways to express the same thing, the original argument is needlessly convoluted and original notation is horribly awkward - future work has improved on that. This is not because "they had no idea about the concepts we have found recently?" - relativity and other non-Newtonian phyics is a different issue - it's about having the best, most accurate represenation of the same concept, and it is very unlikely that the very first attempt in defining a concept is the best result possible. We can make (and have made) much better summaries of Newtonian physics than Newton did, better definitions of Newton's principles than those which he wrote, when we teach Newton's laws of motion, we never use the original wording but an improved paraphrase of them. The original has no value for the learner (other than a historical curiosity) because the revised versions are simply better expressions of the same thing. Why don't we require the same thing from philosophy?

prego_xo 4y ago
I'm not saying we should use those kinds of old practices as a basis for our modern ones, but rather that it's more healthy for new and developing [scientists/artists/philosophers/etc] to study the history and learn about the steps it took to get to our modern understanding. We can't expect to advance further without knowing the foundation on which our understanding is built. Learning about what it took to advance in the past is how we create a mindset that lets us advance now; we can't begin to think critically without knowing our wrongs and our rights in tandem.
denton-scratch 4y ago
> simply because we have developed far better ways to express the same thing To be fair, the main reason we don't study Newton's ideas in their original form is that he wrote in Latin. The second is that he went to rather extreme lengths to make his writing obscure; he was very possessive of his ideas, and didn't want other philosophers pinching them. Read the Newton Leibniz correspondence.
billfruit 4y ago