11 ms·

Why philosophy is largely ignored by science

90 points by derleth 14y ago

bmcleod 14y ago
Philosophy of Science is an extremely broad field. And like any academic field it's easy enough to find crazy stuff at the edges. I do think far more scientists would benefit from a bit more of a look at some of the more established philosophers of the last century. It seems that most gained some knowledge of Popper but nowhere near enough people are really familiar with Kuhn's work(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/). Taking the time to think critically about what you're doing and what it would really take to change your views is critical to actually being open to broad possibilities.
- _delirium 14y ago
  I do think there's a bit of a glass-house problem: finding scientists doing not-great philosophy is not hard. (It's perfectly fine, of course, for one to be ignorant of the other if they aren't trying to do the other one; nobody can do everything.) Theoretical physicists are particularly prone to lapsing, in later career, into armchair philosophy without bothering to actually read anything in philosophy of the past 100 years. That tends, unfortunately, to result in them producing philosophy that has flashes of insight mixed with stuff that could be a lot better if only they had read some of the existing literature, and addressed the obvious problems with some of the standard positions (which too often they reinvent). Of course, philosophers could understand more science too, but I actually think there is more effort being made in that direction: philosophy of science programs are increasingly requiring substantial amounts of technical coursework, and it's a huge plus, for advancement, if you publish at least a few articles in technical journals, too. But in the other direction, there might actually be less philosophy instruction in science programs than there was 100 years ago now (surface-level understandings of Popperian falsificationism seem to be about as far as anyone gets, including my own formal education it must be said). This seems like a recent affliction, too: the early-20th-c scientists (Einstein, Bohr, etc.) were actually quite well-read in the relevant parts of philosophy. Heck, folks like Alan Turing published in peer-reviewed philosophy journals.
reader5000 14y ago
Not really sure a guy whose exposure to "philosophy" apparently consists of awareness of a single writer is prepared to weigh in on the legitimacy of a field as old as civilization. But admittedly I haven't done a RCT to confirm this.
- derleth 14y ago
  This sounds like the Courtier's Reply. How is it different from it? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply
  - _delirium 14y ago
    Can we have a variation that is something like: you have read even a modest amount on it? I'm not a philosopher, and my philosophical knowledge amounts to having taken 3 courses in undergrad (as electives while getting a CS degree), one in grad school (same), and reading a scattered set of books and blogs that interest me. I wouldn't consider myself qualified to opine on Philosophy In General. Yet, this blog post seems to be by someone who knows less about philosophy than I do, yet is more confident in his opinion to give a sweeping judgment of it. That's sort of impressive, but doesn't give me a lot of confidence that I'm receiving well-informed opinions. Actually, that seems like a logical critique in any field. If someone who clearly had read only a handful of things about quantum physics holds forth on why quantum physics is bullshit, it would be a good heuristic to assume that they probably don't know enough to make that judgment, and maybe they should learn some quantum physics first.
  - wpietri 14y ago
    If you're going to condemn a whole field, I think you have to be able to demonstrate that you have a reasonably broad understanding of the field. If somebody says they hate vegetables but their experience is limited to one attempt to eat creamed spinach in 1985, it's not a fallacy to say they don't know what they're talking about.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
_delirium 14y ago
So, I'm a scientist. And I'm skeptical of the utility of a good portion of philosophy for science. But this is a... really ignorant post. It's not even wrong. Just... incoherent, and clearly unfamiliar with the subject it discusses. He seems to be attacking something called "philosophy", first of all, but the targets are some kind of randomly thrown set of darts. Some analytic philosophers discussing probability in a way he doesn't like. The famous Sokal hoax, which trolled a French-influenced American social-theory journal (which incidentally lived in literature departments more than philosophy departments, and was intensely disliked by American philosophers). Just some general rambling. Why is this interesting? It feels like something an undergrad would cobble together off Wikipedia, an "understand and then denounce philosophy in 90 minutes" essay. Does he realize that Alan Sokal, who he seems to like, is actually in favor of philosophy, but is against one particular current in philosophy, which his intervention is intended to diminish? He seems to group Sokal in with both the people Sokal opposes, and the people he supports! How does this make any sense at all? Heck, Sokal likes more philosophers, too: Marx, for example, is on his good list (Sokal is a leftist, fighting something of a civil war in favor of 'Old Left' economics/materialist-focused leftism, against cultural-theory/identity leftism).
- derleth 14y ago
  > Why is this interesting? Because it's an opportunity to explain, in accessible terms in an accessible forum (that is, as opposed to an article that costs five figures per year and uses words like "hermeneutics" without defining them), what value philosophy brings to science and understanding the real world.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
    - derleth 14y ago
      > It would be completely ridiculous to define the word "hermeneutics" in an academic article. My point exactly. If everything written in your field is an academic article, how can you attract new people to your field?
FreakLegion 14y ago
Where to start with this one? I wouldn't expect philosophy of science to be of much practical value to working scientists. Non-scientists, on the other hand, can benefit a great deal from rigorous analysis of the tools, methods and procedures of the sciences, if for no other reason than to dissolve some of the film of invincibility that attaches to them. Of course there are as many quacks doing philosophy of science as there are doing science proper, so choice of texts is important. You can't condemn all philosophy of science based on a handful of publications (note the selection bias in the article) any more than you can condemn all science based on, say, the MMR vaccine controversy[1]. 1. And while we're on the subject of hoaxes, let's just put the whole Sokal affair to bed, shall we? Social Text was an insignificant and unrefereed journal, but even if Sokal had managed to place something in The Philosophical Review, that wouldn't have, as the author put it, "exposed the astonishing intellectual fraud if [sic] postmodernism." Unless the significant number of even more damaging hoaxes perpetrated on science journals have exposed the astonishing intellectual fraud of science?
- derleth 14y ago
  The difference with the Sokal Hoax is that it cuts to the core of what philosophers do: Whereas science has practical, tangible results to show, such as the polio vaccine, all philosophy has is thoughts and ideas, which the Sokal Hoax assaults very directly.
  - msutherl 14y ago
    Philosophy most certainly does have tangible results to show, for instance: modern democracy, the scientific establishment itself, the various international bodies that enforce civil rights, and the modern field of psychology. If you go far enough back, philosophy gave birth to all intellectual forms of knowledge, which in turn greatly influence all aspects of our society.
    - SeanLuke 14y ago
      This got me thinking: what tangible results have arisen from current philosophy, that is, philosophy we've seen in the last, say, 20 years? > philosophy gave birth to all intellectual forms of knowledge I think this is an utterly unsupportable claim unless you're willing to simply define philosophy as encompassing all other forms of intellectual pursuit. Intellectual knowledge (whatever that means) existed long before the Rig Veda and Socrates.
msutherl 14y ago
"It may be asked why it is even worth spending time on these remnants of the utterly discredited postmodernist movement." This is just so ignorant and backward that I have a hard time taking the author of this article seriously. There is no "postmodernist movement". The term refers to a hopelessly large field of practices. Most great so-called "postmodernist" theorists typically have not referred to themselves as such. If you want to discredit theorists who have been critical of scientific practices, you need to put down the Sokal and actually engage with specific works. You might be surprised to find that many of these "postmodernists" are either trained scientists or actually know what they're talking about. Just a few suggestions if you want to dip your toes in the water: – Gilles Deleuze wrote powerfully on metaphysics, integrating many incites from mathematics in the 60's and 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics Check out "Difference and Repetition". – Alain Badiou uses set theory in his ontology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou#Mathematics_as_ontology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou#Mathematics_as_ont... – I find his ontology lacking though; he should learn something from the failings of set theory in the early 20th century. – Bruno Latour in a the domain of Science and Technology Studies has written voluminously about scientific and technological practices from a more anthropological point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography – Isabelle Stengers has written something more along the lines of what's critiqued in this article, a critique of the authority of science in society: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabelle-Stengers/dp/0816656878 http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabell... – works like this question whether the privileging of science over all other forms of knowledge is good for society. This particular work argues that it is not. – Mike Cooley argues powerfully that the deskilling of the engineering industry caused by computer-aided design and manufacturing is a travesty: http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Bee-Human-Technology-Relationship/dp/0896081311 http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Bee-Human-Technology-Relatio... A general note about so-called "postmodernism". The Wikipedia definition includes the following: "Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. In essence, it is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality." It's important to understand that "postmodernism" isn't critiquing the effectiveness of science. It is merely claiming that, as it says, reality is not mirrored in human understanding. The models we create to explain observed phenomena are not direct reflections of reality, they are simply characteristically human, linguistic models that correspond to our observations. As Niels Bohr wrote: "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature..." The question is whether our habit of elevating scientific explanation to the 'one true truth' is (1) right and (2) a good thing. Most "postmodernists" argue that other forms of knowledge are perfectly legitimate (for instance, indigenous people who still live tribally lead perfectly happy lives without science) and that the privileging of science over other forms of knowledge is not a unilaterally good thing (for instance, it is reasonable to say there's a decent change that we will extinguish ourselves as a species in the next hundred years thanks to the exploits of scientifically advanced societies). You may notice that both of those examples are anthropological. This hints at something very important about "postmodernism". When people talk about "postmodernism", they're often talking about "post-structuralism", which is another hopelessly broad category referring to theory that in some way extends "structuralism", which is in turn closely connected to the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the "father of modern anthropology". "Postmodernism" can be seen in this sense to be a kind of anthropologically informed philosophy. Rather than creating theoretically sound abstract models, they look at how those models actually play out "in the field" and draw conclusions. Hence the critique of science: despite the power of scientific explanation, it may not necessarily result in a better society and indeed the evidence shows that it does not. And one final point, the author is totally wrong to claim that scientists have not been concerned with the philosophy of science. Many early twentieth century scientists – the ones who create the theory of relatively and quantum physics especially – even wrote books on the philosophy of science as well as its role in society. Some examples: – Schrödinger - "What is Life": http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches/dp/0521427088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339983525&sr=8-1&keywords=what+is+life+schrodinger http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches... – Herman Weyl ("His overall approach in physics was based on the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, specifically Husserl's 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl – Heisenberg - "Physics and Philosophy": http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Philosophy-Revolution-Modern-Science/dp/0061209198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339983530&sr=8-1&keywords=heisenberg+philosophy http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Philosophy-Revolution-Modern-S... – David Bohm - "Wholeness and the Implicate Order": http://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-David-Bohm/dp/0415289793/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339983673&sr=1-1&keywords=david+bohm http://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-David-Bohm/d... Here's a more modern book from an economist that references Deleuze and other "post-structuralists": – "The Blank Swan": http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470725222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339984084&sr=8-1&keywords=the+blank+swan http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470...
stcredzero 14y ago
There is a meme going around groups aligned with the rationality movement, asserting that there's a hierarchy of worth in academic disciplines. Basically, the hard sciences are worth more, and the harder the science, the more it's worth. Philosophy is near the bottom of this hierarchy, though some of the products of philosophy are deemed to be valuable. (Basically it's an evaluation of Signal to Noise ratios, more than a declaration of absolute worth across the discipline.)
goodside 14y ago
By what mechanism did you conclude that random controlled trials are more trustworthy than observational studies? Does that mechanism more closely resemble an observational study or a random controlled trial?
- SudarshanP 14y ago
  There is a lot of extra rigor in a random controlled study than an observational study because it is harder to "cook up data" to support the scientists own beliefs. This may even happen unconsciously.
  - _delirium 14y ago
    I believe the point was a meta one: when arguing in favor of studies with randomized controls, do you make the argument by setting up a randomized controlled study to test the superiority of randomized controlled studies? If the only things worth paying attention to are the results of randomized controlled studies, then that's the only possible way you could consistently argue in favor of them. Instead, it seems more common to establish the "ground rules" of science by some other means, such as arguments about the pros/cons of various scientific methodologies, or even what counts as "scientific methodology" at all (and at this point, you're doing philosophy of science).
cwp 14y ago
So basically, he dismissed philosophy as irrelevant, then happened across some obscure papers by cranks at the margins of philosophic thought, and concluded that he was right all along. Unenlightening.
shalmanese 14y ago
Many who choose to use Sokal to highlight their point seem to be unaware that Science has had it's own reverse-Sokal with the Bogdanov affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair
scyscy 14y ago
Navel gazing.
kevinalexbrown 14y ago
I do science. When I was younger, I devoured philosophy treatises, law reviews, and political science books. I still find it fun, but I lost the passion for it. However, I disagree strongly with this article in his characterization of philosophers. I haven't left philosophy because everyone in it is stupid, as this article seems to suggest. I left philosophy because after all my reading, note-taking, class-discussioning, and debate tournamenting, I never felt like I'd made any progress, and that mattered to me personally. At the end of the day, the questions that were hard to answer were still unsolved, and the gray ethical areas were still gray. This is why I don't do philosophy, and I why I found the science bug. Not because philosophy lacks rigor or reasonable investigators. In philosophy, real answers are difficult to find and prove, but in math and science, even though every answer brings 10 new questions, you can look back and say: I proved that theorem, I empirically verified the acceleration of the earth. To quote my favorite xkcd T-shirt "Science, it works, bitches!". Most scientists I know that disregard philosophy do so because science gives them a feeling of getting somewhere, while philosophy, even at its most rigorous, just seems to leave them more confused than when they started. It's more of a personal preference for that kind of investigation than any rejection of the intelligence of a large group of people.
- derrida 14y ago
  I agree with all of the above. Except there are isolated cases of philosophy actually pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge. Arguably Russell & Whitehead did in the Principia Mathematica, which attempted to put the foundation of mathematics in terms of logic. That system is the system where Godel found a paradox, which lead to Godels theorems. I'm sure Turing had it in the back of his mind that the Turing machine was a useful way of reasoning about those propositions which are 'true and provable'. Russell/Whitehead --> Godel --> Turing. Another area where there have arguably been successes (even through failure), is in the attempts to formalise natural languages into logic (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein). This is the tradition that informed Chomsky, whose theories of grammar inform modern compiler design. There are philosophers alive that I believe have advanced the frontier of knowledge, but as with some areas of pure mathematics it's hard to say practically what that means. I have in mind Kripke.
chris_wot 14y ago
The title is misleading. It really should be "Why postmodernism is largely ignored by science (and mostly everyone else)."
joelmichael 14y ago
Are we to regard Ethics as irrelevant? Logic? Aesthetics? Epistemology? Metaphysics? These are the five branches of philosophy. I majored in Computer Science and have a minor in Philosophy. I consider philosophy the most important element of my life, and the lives of everyone else, often unknowingly. I see philosophy all the time on Hacker News and elsewhere. What do you call debates over law, for instance? Are those scientific? No, those are philosophy. So much of what humans do is philosophy that to suggest they do not participate in it because they aren't talking in "academic" terms is simply inaccurate.
- derleth 14y ago
  > Ethics as irrelevant? Having it or arguing about it? > Logic? Depends on what kind of logic you mean. There are multiple different entities covered by that word, some of which are not philosophy. And for the rest: Arguments that never end produce what?
  - joelmichael 14y ago
    They produce our civilization. Right now you are speaking philosophically. Why bother?
xenophanes 14y ago
So he says at the start he dismissed the best philosopher in the field, Karl Popper, without reading him. Maybe most scientists ignore Popper's philosophy of science (the only worthwhile one) because they are ignorant and judge which philosophy to read by inaccurate reputation rather than merit. Though bear in mind, quite a few scientists, big and small, did not ignore Popper and actually liked his ideas and found them helpful. E.g. Richard Feynman, David Deutsch, and Albert Einstein.
- da-bacon 14y ago
  Popper's great. Your reference to Feynman, however, reminded me of this classic qip: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” ― Richard P. Feynman
  - xenophanes 14y ago
    If you're interested in Popper, please let me invite you to the best Popperian discussion group on the internet: http://beginningofinfinity.com/discussion http://beginningofinfinity.com/discussion I'm aware of that Feynman quote. But he apparently had in mind typical philosophers as he did read and understand Popper. Here's a quote from David Deutsch (correcting someone who claimed that Feynman had never heard of Popper): > For what it's worth, I happened to mention Popper in the one conversation I had with Feynman, sometime in the 80s, and he did not say "who's that?" but replied meaningfully to the point. I know Deutsch and have heard the full story. Feynman showed substantial understanding of Popper. Plus avoided all the usual epistemological errors. Feynman may have been introduced to Popper by Wheeler. Here is Deutsch on Wheeler: > Wheeler ... (my boss and Feynman's thesis advisor and subsequently his collaborator), knew a lot about Popper and was honoured and delighted when Popper quoted one of Wheeler's aphorisms as a chapter epigraph. Wheeler and I discussed Popper in detail on several occasions and I tried to persuade him to become a Popperian -- ultimately without success, because he preferred Polanyi (!). Nevertheless there were specific aspects of Popperian philosophy of science that he very much agreed with, especially that scientific theories are not derived from anywhere, that they are conjectural and full of errors, and that science makes progress by correcting these errors.
richardjordan 14y ago
What an incredibly uninformed comments thread. Firstly to the main post, of course philosophy isn't ignored by science. Science is an offshoot of philosophy and happily so. It's a ridiculous premise not born out by the article itself. Secondly, it sounds like several commenters have studied little or no philosophy in an academic setting, and as a result are posting garbage comments based on straw men of their own creation. Is it hard to take on modern philosophers on their own ground? Is the language they use sometimes confusing to the layman? Is that sometimes frustrating? Sure it is. But that's because they have to shortcut a few thousand years of philosophical reasoning to make the points so that we don't end up in the weeds with every discussion. It's no different (as a trained Physicist myself) to the manner modern Physicists talk about our discipline in ways which are confusing to the layman, because we use cutting edge math to short cut a few thousand years of philosophical reasoning to make their point. Study any subject to the edge of current thinking and you get to incredible levels of specialism because we've been at academia, as a global civilization, for an awfully long time. Not everything can be boiled down to an elevator pitch. It may be hot to say people don't need to go to university, and further education is meaningless in the context of startups, but it's not meaningless if you actually want to understand the most advanced thought in areas of academic interest. It might not be the best avenue for most people for most career paths, but if you want to discuss philosophy and science (or as it used to be called Natural Philosophy) then it's probably best done with some kind of solid education in those fields.
dmfdmf 14y ago
Modern philosophy is largely ignored by science and scientists because it has nothing to offer but endless questions and debates, unresolveable paradoxes and pointless inquiry into the modern day equivalent of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Who needs it? Unfortunately, science needs a rational philosophy now more than ever. Under the influence of Kant and his derivatives like Popper that dominate the modern universities, the fundamentals of science such as identity, causality, knowledge, logic and proof are being undercut and destroyed by the very sciences that use and need these concepts. Tragically, the scientists are distainful of modern philosophy (for good reason) but make the mistake of reject all philosophy, and are thus throwing the baby out with the bath water. For anyone with a serious interest in these issues I recommend that you read Ayn Rand's "Philosophy: Who Needs It" and her "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". In the former book, her answer is that everyone needs a philosophy because it is the science of fundamentals that apply to everyone and all sciences.
- zenogais 14y ago
  Oh jesus. Someone who clearly hasn't read any modern philosophy but Ayn Rand.
  - nosse 14y ago
    Could you at least point out some good modern philosophy? Otherwise your comment is not worth much.
    - chris_wot 14y ago
      For myself, I can't really say. What I can say was that reading The Fountainhead was a truly dreadful experience. I hope that I never live in a world where people live their lives like Howard Roark does.
b1daly 14y ago
This thread made me think of this New Yorker article on the "Decline Effect" which is describes a tendency for the results of scientific experiments (in particular those based on statistical methods) to weaken as experiments are repeated. As a person with a generally skeptical/pro science bent it truly shocked me. It highlights the need for understanding the sociology of science, which has huge impacts on its effectiveness.
stiff 14y ago
There are at least a few cases where philosophy influenced science in a major way, so while I understand some of the reasons scientists might get tired of philosophy, I don't think it's valid to dismiss its contributions entirely. For an example, here is Einstein in a letter on his discovery of relativity (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2149/ http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2149/): Your exposition is also quite right that positivism suggested relativity theory, without requiring it. Also you have correctly seen that this line of thought was of great influence on my efforts and indeed E. Mach and still much more Hume, whose treatise on understanding I studied with eagerness and admiration shortly before finding relativity theory.
Vlaix 14y ago
I doubt being well versed in philosophy is relevant to most scientists nowadays, at least from a practical standpoint. As I heard Michel Serres put it a couple years ago : « Today's society produces ignorant technicians and cultivated [put any word describing someone that can't count up to two] » (roughly translated from the original French). And they do fine by it, apparently. But it is damageable to ignore some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Descartes (regarding science). As I think about it, it comes to me that whether philosophy is or isn't necessary isn't relevant. Empirical necessity doesn't sums up human aspirations, and music or poetry play in the same field. Philosophy is a way or structuring certain angles of thinking, and that's pretty cool. As a developer I have absolutely no use of Heidegger or saint Thomas in my activity, but I'm glad they exist.
suprememoocow 14y ago
From the introduction to The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow: "Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge"
David_Colquhoun 14y ago
A lot of people must read Hacker News. My hit rate went up ten-fold and most seem to have come from here, so thanks derleth I certainly didn't want to offend philosophers. I was merely pointing out that most scientists don't find their ideas very useful in practice. The piece arose as a postscript to a piece "In praise of randomisation". It was in the course of writing that that I discovered the a small (I hope) number of philosophers denied this idea. That does active harm. . A twitter user, @shanemuk, sent this today. Sums it up nicely. "What you need to know about #Science, #Philosophy and #Sausages @david_colquhoun - answersingenes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/show-m…

90 points by derleth 14y ago

Philosophy of Science is an extremely broad field. And like any academic field it's easy enough to find crazy stuff at the edges. I do think far more scientists would benefit from a bit more of a look at some of the more established philosophers of the last century. It seems that most gained some knowledge of Popper but nowhere near enough people are really familiar with Kuhn's work(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/ http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/). Taking the time to think critically about what you're doing and what it would really take to change your views is critical to actually being open to broad possibilities.

_delirium 14y ago
I do think there's a bit of a glass-house problem: finding scientists doing not-great philosophy is not hard. (It's perfectly fine, of course, for one to be ignorant of the other if they aren't trying to do the other one; nobody can do everything.) Theoretical physicists are particularly prone to lapsing, in later career, into armchair philosophy without bothering to actually read anything in philosophy of the past 100 years. That tends, unfortunately, to result in them producing philosophy that has flashes of insight mixed with stuff that could be a lot better if only they had read some of the existing literature, and addressed the obvious problems with some of the standard positions (which too often they reinvent). Of course, philosophers could understand more science too, but I actually think there is more effort being made in that direction: philosophy of science programs are increasingly requiring substantial amounts of technical coursework, and it's a huge plus, for advancement, if you publish at least a few articles in technical journals, too. But in the other direction, there might actually be less philosophy instruction in science programs than there was 100 years ago now (surface-level understandings of Popperian falsificationism seem to be about as far as anyone gets, including my own formal education it must be said). This seems like a recent affliction, too: the early-20th-c scientists (Einstein, Bohr, etc.) were actually quite well-read in the relevant parts of philosophy. Heck, folks like Alan Turing published in peer-reviewed philosophy journals.

reader5000 14y ago

Not really sure a guy whose exposure to "philosophy" apparently consists of awareness of a single writer is prepared to weigh in on the legitimacy of a field as old as civilization. But admittedly I haven't done a RCT to confirm this.

derleth 14y ago
This sounds like the Courtier's Reply. How is it different from it? http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Courtier%27s_Reply
- _delirium 14y ago
  Can we have a variation that is something like: you have read even a modest amount on it? I'm not a philosopher, and my philosophical knowledge amounts to having taken 3 courses in undergrad (as electives while getting a CS degree), one in grad school (same), and reading a scattered set of books and blogs that interest me. I wouldn't consider myself qualified to opine on Philosophy In General. Yet, this blog post seems to be by someone who knows less about philosophy than I do, yet is more confident in his opinion to give a sweeping judgment of it. That's sort of impressive, but doesn't give me a lot of confidence that I'm receiving well-informed opinions. Actually, that seems like a logical critique in any field. If someone who clearly had read only a handful of things about quantum physics holds forth on why quantum physics is bullshit, it would be a good heuristic to assume that they probably don't know enough to make that judgment, and maybe they should learn some quantum physics first.
- wpietri 14y ago
  If you're going to condemn a whole field, I think you have to be able to demonstrate that you have a reasonably broad understanding of the field. If somebody says they hate vegetables but their experience is limited to one attempt to eat creamed spinach in 1985, it's not a fallacy to say they don't know what they're talking about.
  - chris_wot 14y ago

_delirium 14y ago

So, I'm a scientist. And I'm skeptical of the utility of a good portion of philosophy for science. But this is a... really ignorant post. It's not even wrong. Just... incoherent, and clearly unfamiliar with the subject it discusses. He seems to be attacking something called "philosophy", first of all, but the targets are some kind of randomly thrown set of darts. Some analytic philosophers discussing probability in a way he doesn't like. The famous Sokal hoax, which trolled a French-influenced American social-theory journal (which incidentally lived in literature departments more than philosophy departments, and was intensely disliked by American philosophers). Just some general rambling. Why is this interesting? It feels like something an undergrad would cobble together off Wikipedia, an "understand and then denounce philosophy in 90 minutes" essay. Does he realize that Alan Sokal, who he seems to like, is actually in favor of philosophy, but is against one particular current in philosophy, which his intervention is intended to diminish? He seems to group Sokal in with both the people Sokal opposes, and the people he supports! How does this make any sense at all? Heck, Sokal likes more philosophers, too: Marx, for example, is on his good list (Sokal is a leftist, fighting something of a civil war in favor of 'Old Left' economics/materialist-focused leftism, against cultural-theory/identity leftism).

derleth 14y ago
> Why is this interesting? Because it's an opportunity to explain, in accessible terms in an accessible forum (that is, as opposed to an article that costs five figures per year and uses words like "hermeneutics" without defining them), what value philosophy brings to science and understanding the real world.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
  - derleth 14y ago
    > It would be completely ridiculous to define the word "hermeneutics" in an academic article. My point exactly. If everything written in your field is an academic article, how can you attract new people to your field?

FreakLegion 14y ago

Where to start with this one? I wouldn't expect philosophy of science to be of much practical value to working scientists. Non-scientists, on the other hand, can benefit a great deal from rigorous analysis of the tools, methods and procedures of the sciences, if for no other reason than to dissolve some of the film of invincibility that attaches to them. Of course there are as many quacks doing philosophy of science as there are doing science proper, so choice of texts is important. You can't condemn all philosophy of science based on a handful of publications (note the selection bias in the article) any more than you can condemn all science based on, say, the MMR vaccine controversy[1]. 1. And while we're on the subject of hoaxes, let's just put the whole Sokal affair to bed, shall we? Social Text was an insignificant and unrefereed journal, but even if Sokal had managed to place something in The Philosophical Review, that wouldn't have, as the author put it, "exposed the astonishing intellectual fraud if [sic] postmodernism." Unless the significant number of even more damaging hoaxes perpetrated on science journals have exposed the astonishing intellectual fraud of science?

derleth 14y ago
The difference with the Sokal Hoax is that it cuts to the core of what philosophers do: Whereas science has practical, tangible results to show, such as the polio vaccine, all philosophy has is thoughts and ideas, which the Sokal Hoax assaults very directly.
- msutherl 14y ago
  Philosophy most certainly does have tangible results to show, for instance: modern democracy, the scientific establishment itself, the various international bodies that enforce civil rights, and the modern field of psychology. If you go far enough back, philosophy gave birth to all intellectual forms of knowledge, which in turn greatly influence all aspects of our society.
  - SeanLuke 14y ago
    This got me thinking: what tangible results have arisen from current philosophy, that is, philosophy we've seen in the last, say, 20 years? > philosophy gave birth to all intellectual forms of knowledge I think this is an utterly unsupportable claim unless you're willing to simply define philosophy as encompassing all other forms of intellectual pursuit. Intellectual knowledge (whatever that means) existed long before the Rig Veda and Socrates.

msutherl 14y ago

"It may be asked why it is even worth spending time on these remnants of the utterly discredited postmodernist movement." This is just so ignorant and backward that I have a hard time taking the author of this article seriously. There is no "postmodernist movement". The term refers to a hopelessly large field of practices. Most great so-called "postmodernist" theorists typically have not referred to themselves as such. If you want to discredit theorists who have been critical of scientific practices, you need to put down the Sokal and actually engage with specific works. You might be surprised to find that many of these "postmodernists" are either trained scientists or actually know what they're talking about. Just a few suggestions if you want to dip your toes in the water: – Gilles Deleuze wrote powerfully on metaphysics, integrating many incites from mathematics in the 60's and 70's: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deleuze#Metaphysics Check out "Difference and Repetition". – Alain Badiou uses set theory in his ontology: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou#Mathematics_as_ontology http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_Badiou#Mathematics_as_ont... – I find his ontology lacking though; he should learn something from the failings of set theory in the early 20th century. – Bruno Latour in a the domain of Science and Technology Studies has written voluminously about scientific and technological practices from a more anthropological point of view: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruno_Latour#Biography – Isabelle Stengers has written something more along the lines of what's critiqued in this article, a critique of the authority of science in society: http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabelle-Stengers/dp/0816656878 http://www.amazon.com/Cosmopolitics-I-Posthumanities-Isabell... – works like this question whether the privileging of science over all other forms of knowledge is good for society. This particular work argues that it is not. – Mike Cooley argues powerfully that the deskilling of the engineering industry caused by computer-aided design and manufacturing is a travesty: http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Bee-Human-Technology-Relationship/dp/0896081311 http://www.amazon.com/Architect-Bee-Human-Technology-Relatio... A general note about so-called "postmodernism". The Wikipedia definition includes the following: "Postmodernism is largely a reaction to the assumed certainty of scientific or objective efforts to explain reality. In essence, it is based on the position that reality is not mirrored in human understanding of it, but is rather constructed as the mind tries to understand its own personal reality." It's important to understand that "postmodernism" isn't critiquing the effectiveness of science. It is merely claiming that, as it says, reality is not mirrored in human understanding. The models we create to explain observed phenomena are not direct reflections of reality, they are simply characteristically human, linguistic models that correspond to our observations. As Niels Bohr wrote: "There is no quantum world. There is only an abstract physical description. It is wrong to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature..." The question is whether our habit of elevating scientific explanation to the 'one true truth' is (1) right and (2) a good thing. Most "postmodernists" argue that other forms of knowledge are perfectly legitimate (for instance, indigenous people who still live tribally lead perfectly happy lives without science) and that the privileging of science over other forms of knowledge is not a unilaterally good thing (for instance, it is reasonable to say there's a decent change that we will extinguish ourselves as a species in the next hundred years thanks to the exploits of scientifically advanced societies). You may notice that both of those examples are anthropological. This hints at something very important about "postmodernism". When people talk about "postmodernism", they're often talking about "post-structuralism", which is another hopelessly broad category referring to theory that in some way extends "structuralism", which is in turn closely connected to the theories of Claude Lévi-Strauss, the "father of modern anthropology". "Postmodernism" can be seen in this sense to be a kind of anthropologically informed philosophy. Rather than creating theoretically sound abstract models, they look at how those models actually play out "in the field" and draw conclusions. Hence the critique of science: despite the power of scientific explanation, it may not necessarily result in a better society and indeed the evidence shows that it does not. And one final point, the author is totally wrong to claim that scientists have not been concerned with the philosophy of science. Many early twentieth century scientists – the ones who create the theory of relatively and quantum physics especially – even wrote books on the philosophy of science as well as its role in society. Some examples: – Schrödinger - "What is Life": http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches/dp/0521427088/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339983525&sr=8-1&keywords=what+is+life+schrodinger http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Life-Autobiographical-Sketches... – Herman Weyl ("His overall approach in physics was based on the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, specifically Husserl's 1913 Ideen zu einer reinen Phänomenologie und phänomenologischen Philosophie. Erstes Buch: Allgemeine Einführung in die reine Phänomenologie"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermann_Weyl – Heisenberg - "Physics and Philosophy": http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Philosophy-Revolution-Modern-Science/dp/0061209198/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339983530&sr=8-1&keywords=heisenberg+philosophy http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Philosophy-Revolution-Modern-S... – David Bohm - "Wholeness and the Implicate Order": http://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-David-Bohm/dp/0415289793/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1339983673&sr=1-1&keywords=david+bohm http://www.amazon.com/Wholeness-Implicate-Order-David-Bohm/d... Here's a more modern book from an economist that references Deleuze and other "post-structuralists": – "The Blank Swan": http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470725222/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1339984084&sr=8-1&keywords=the+blank+swan http://www.amazon.com/The-Blank-Swan-End-Probability/dp/0470...

stcredzero 14y ago

There is a meme going around groups aligned with the rationality movement, asserting that there's a hierarchy of worth in academic disciplines. Basically, the hard sciences are worth more, and the harder the science, the more it's worth. Philosophy is near the bottom of this hierarchy, though some of the products of philosophy are deemed to be valuable. (Basically it's an evaluation of Signal to Noise ratios, more than a declaration of absolute worth across the discipline.)

goodside 14y ago

By what mechanism did you conclude that random controlled trials are more trustworthy than observational studies? Does that mechanism more closely resemble an observational study or a random controlled trial?

SudarshanP 14y ago
There is a lot of extra rigor in a random controlled study than an observational study because it is harder to "cook up data" to support the scientists own beliefs. This may even happen unconsciously.
- _delirium 14y ago
  I believe the point was a meta one: when arguing in favor of studies with randomized controls, do you make the argument by setting up a randomized controlled study to test the superiority of randomized controlled studies? If the only things worth paying attention to are the results of randomized controlled studies, then that's the only possible way you could consistently argue in favor of them. Instead, it seems more common to establish the "ground rules" of science by some other means, such as arguments about the pros/cons of various scientific methodologies, or even what counts as "scientific methodology" at all (and at this point, you're doing philosophy of science).

cwp 14y ago

So basically, he dismissed philosophy as irrelevant, then happened across some obscure papers by cranks at the margins of philosophic thought, and concluded that he was right all along. Unenlightening.

shalmanese 14y ago

Many who choose to use Sokal to highlight their point seem to be unaware that Science has had it's own reverse-Sokal with the Bogdanov affair: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bogdanov_Affair

scyscy 14y ago

Navel gazing.

kevinalexbrown 14y ago

I do science. When I was younger, I devoured philosophy treatises, law reviews, and political science books. I still find it fun, but I lost the passion for it. However, I disagree strongly with this article in his characterization of philosophers. I haven't left philosophy because everyone in it is stupid, as this article seems to suggest. I left philosophy because after all my reading, note-taking, class-discussioning, and debate tournamenting, I never felt like I'd made any progress, and that mattered to me personally. At the end of the day, the questions that were hard to answer were still unsolved, and the gray ethical areas were still gray. This is why I don't do philosophy, and I why I found the science bug. Not because philosophy lacks rigor or reasonable investigators. In philosophy, real answers are difficult to find and prove, but in math and science, even though every answer brings 10 new questions, you can look back and say: I proved that theorem, I empirically verified the acceleration of the earth. To quote my favorite xkcd T-shirt "Science, it works, bitches!". Most scientists I know that disregard philosophy do so because science gives them a feeling of getting somewhere, while philosophy, even at its most rigorous, just seems to leave them more confused than when they started. It's more of a personal preference for that kind of investigation than any rejection of the intelligence of a large group of people.

derrida 14y ago
I agree with all of the above. Except there are isolated cases of philosophy actually pushing forward the frontiers of knowledge. Arguably Russell & Whitehead did in the Principia Mathematica, which attempted to put the foundation of mathematics in terms of logic. That system is the system where Godel found a paradox, which lead to Godels theorems. I'm sure Turing had it in the back of his mind that the Turing machine was a useful way of reasoning about those propositions which are 'true and provable'. Russell/Whitehead --> Godel --> Turing. Another area where there have arguably been successes (even through failure), is in the attempts to formalise natural languages into logic (Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein). This is the tradition that informed Chomsky, whose theories of grammar inform modern compiler design. There are philosophers alive that I believe have advanced the frontier of knowledge, but as with some areas of pure mathematics it's hard to say practically what that means. I have in mind Kripke.

chris_wot 14y ago

The title is misleading. It really should be "Why postmodernism is largely ignored by science (and mostly everyone else)."

joelmichael 14y ago

Are we to regard Ethics as irrelevant? Logic? Aesthetics? Epistemology? Metaphysics? These are the five branches of philosophy. I majored in Computer Science and have a minor in Philosophy. I consider philosophy the most important element of my life, and the lives of everyone else, often unknowingly. I see philosophy all the time on Hacker News and elsewhere. What do you call debates over law, for instance? Are those scientific? No, those are philosophy. So much of what humans do is philosophy that to suggest they do not participate in it because they aren't talking in "academic" terms is simply inaccurate.

derleth 14y ago
> Ethics as irrelevant? Having it or arguing about it? > Logic? Depends on what kind of logic you mean. There are multiple different entities covered by that word, some of which are not philosophy. And for the rest: Arguments that never end produce what?
- joelmichael 14y ago
  They produce our civilization. Right now you are speaking philosophically. Why bother?

xenophanes 14y ago

So he says at the start he dismissed the best philosopher in the field, Karl Popper, without reading him. Maybe most scientists ignore Popper's philosophy of science (the only worthwhile one) because they are ignorant and judge which philosophy to read by inaccurate reputation rather than merit. Though bear in mind, quite a few scientists, big and small, did not ignore Popper and actually liked his ideas and found them helpful. E.g. Richard Feynman, David Deutsch, and Albert Einstein.

da-bacon 14y ago
Popper's great. Your reference to Feynman, however, reminded me of this classic qip: “Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.” ― Richard P. Feynman
- xenophanes 14y ago
  If you're interested in Popper, please let me invite you to the best Popperian discussion group on the internet: http://beginningofinfinity.com/discussion http://beginningofinfinity.com/discussion I'm aware of that Feynman quote. But he apparently had in mind typical philosophers as he did read and understand Popper. Here's a quote from David Deutsch (correcting someone who claimed that Feynman had never heard of Popper): > For what it's worth, I happened to mention Popper in the one conversation I had with Feynman, sometime in the 80s, and he did not say "who's that?" but replied meaningfully to the point. I know Deutsch and have heard the full story. Feynman showed substantial understanding of Popper. Plus avoided all the usual epistemological errors. Feynman may have been introduced to Popper by Wheeler. Here is Deutsch on Wheeler: > Wheeler ... (my boss and Feynman's thesis advisor and subsequently his collaborator), knew a lot about Popper and was honoured and delighted when Popper quoted one of Wheeler's aphorisms as a chapter epigraph. Wheeler and I discussed Popper in detail on several occasions and I tried to persuade him to become a Popperian -- ultimately without success, because he preferred Polanyi (!). Nevertheless there were specific aspects of Popperian philosophy of science that he very much agreed with, especially that scientific theories are not derived from anywhere, that they are conjectural and full of errors, and that science makes progress by correcting these errors.

richardjordan 14y ago

What an incredibly uninformed comments thread. Firstly to the main post, of course philosophy isn't ignored by science. Science is an offshoot of philosophy and happily so. It's a ridiculous premise not born out by the article itself. Secondly, it sounds like several commenters have studied little or no philosophy in an academic setting, and as a result are posting garbage comments based on straw men of their own creation. Is it hard to take on modern philosophers on their own ground? Is the language they use sometimes confusing to the layman? Is that sometimes frustrating? Sure it is. But that's because they have to shortcut a few thousand years of philosophical reasoning to make the points so that we don't end up in the weeds with every discussion. It's no different (as a trained Physicist myself) to the manner modern Physicists talk about our discipline in ways which are confusing to the layman, because we use cutting edge math to short cut a few thousand years of philosophical reasoning to make their point. Study any subject to the edge of current thinking and you get to incredible levels of specialism because we've been at academia, as a global civilization, for an awfully long time. Not everything can be boiled down to an elevator pitch. It may be hot to say people don't need to go to university, and further education is meaningless in the context of startups, but it's not meaningless if you actually want to understand the most advanced thought in areas of academic interest. It might not be the best avenue for most people for most career paths, but if you want to discuss philosophy and science (or as it used to be called Natural Philosophy) then it's probably best done with some kind of solid education in those fields.

dmfdmf 14y ago

Modern philosophy is largely ignored by science and scientists because it has nothing to offer but endless questions and debates, unresolveable paradoxes and pointless inquiry into the modern day equivalent of how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. Who needs it? Unfortunately, science needs a rational philosophy now more than ever. Under the influence of Kant and his derivatives like Popper that dominate the modern universities, the fundamentals of science such as identity, causality, knowledge, logic and proof are being undercut and destroyed by the very sciences that use and need these concepts. Tragically, the scientists are distainful of modern philosophy (for good reason) but make the mistake of reject all philosophy, and are thus throwing the baby out with the bath water. For anyone with a serious interest in these issues I recommend that you read Ayn Rand's "Philosophy: Who Needs It" and her "Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology". In the former book, her answer is that everyone needs a philosophy because it is the science of fundamentals that apply to everyone and all sciences.

zenogais 14y ago
Oh jesus. Someone who clearly hasn't read any modern philosophy but Ayn Rand.
- nosse 14y ago
  Could you at least point out some good modern philosophy? Otherwise your comment is not worth much.
  - chris_wot 14y ago
    For myself, I can't really say. What I can say was that reading The Fountainhead was a truly dreadful experience. I hope that I never live in a world where people live their lives like Howard Roark does.

b1daly 14y ago

This thread made me think of this New Yorker article on the "Decline Effect" which is describes a tendency for the results of scientific experiments (in particular those based on statistical methods) to weaken as experiments are repeated. As a person with a generally skeptical/pro science bent it truly shocked me. It highlights the need for understanding the sociology of science, which has huge impacts on its effectiveness.

stiff 14y ago

There are at least a few cases where philosophy influenced science in a major way, so while I understand some of the reasons scientists might get tired of philosophy, I don't think it's valid to dismiss its contributions entirely. For an example, here is Einstein in a letter on his discovery of relativity (http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2149/ http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/2149/): Your exposition is also quite right that positivism suggested relativity theory, without requiring it. Also you have correctly seen that this line of thought was of great influence on my efforts and indeed E. Mach and still much more Hume, whose treatise on understanding I studied with eagerness and admiration shortly before finding relativity theory.

Vlaix 14y ago

I doubt being well versed in philosophy is relevant to most scientists nowadays, at least from a practical standpoint. As I heard Michel Serres put it a couple years ago : « Today's society produces ignorant technicians and cultivated [put any word describing someone that can't count up to two] » (roughly translated from the original French). And they do fine by it, apparently. But it is damageable to ignore some fundamentals, from Pythagoras to Descartes (regarding science). As I think about it, it comes to me that whether philosophy is or isn't necessary isn't relevant. Empirical necessity doesn't sums up human aspirations, and music or poetry play in the same field. Philosophy is a way or structuring certain angles of thinking, and that's pretty cool. As a developer I have absolutely no use of Heidegger or saint Thomas in my activity, but I'm glad they exist.

suprememoocow 14y ago

From the introduction to The Grand Design by Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow: "Traditionally these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge"

David_Colquhoun 14y ago

A lot of people must read Hacker News. My hit rate went up ten-fold and most seem to have come from here, so thanks derleth I certainly didn't want to offend philosophers. I was merely pointing out that most scientists don't find their ideas very useful in practice. The piece arose as a postscript to a piece "In praise of randomisation". It was in the course of writing that that I discovered the a small (I hope) number of philosophers denied this idea. That does active harm. . A twitter user, @shanemuk, sent this today. Sums it up nicely. "What you need to know about #Science, #Philosophy and #Sausages @david_colquhoun - answersingenes.blogspot.co.uk/2011/06/show-m…