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Why Science Needs Philosophy

pood

pood

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I have seen a number of posts in various threads suggesting that philosophy is useless to science, or just useless period. And it’s true that many scientists say they have no use for philosophy. On Page One of one of his books, Steven Hawking famously declared “philosophy is dead,” and then went on to write a book — of philosophy. Apparently he didn’t get his own memo.

The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, a peer-reviewed science journal that publishes work across a wide range of disciplines, does not agree. I commend to your attention Why Science Needs Philosophy, which focuses on the major contributions of philosophy to biology, including stem-cell research, the discontinuity theory of immunity, cognitive science (especially the contributions of the philosopher Jerry Fodor), evolutionary altruism, debates over units of selection, and how to define genes, on which, perhaps surprisingly, there is still disagreement. It also alludes to the contribution of philosophy to physics on the definition of time, especially the work of Huw Price and David Lewis, both of whom I have read, and Lewis’s paper The Paradoxes of Time Travel is a classic contribution to analytic philosophy.

In the quote that opens this article, Einstein takes direct aim at the “shut up and calculate” school of science, likening them to “artisans” as distinct from “real seekers after truth.”
 
As to science being a branch of natural philosophy.


en.wikipedia.org

Natural philosophy - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org en.wikipedia.org

Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin philosophia naturalis) is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe while ignoring any supernatural influence. It was dominant before the development of modern science.

From the ancient world (at least since Aristotle) until the 19th century, natural philosophy was the common term for the study of physics (nature), a broad term that included botany, zoology, anthropology, and chemistry as well as what we now call physics. It was in the 19th century that the concept of science received its modern shape, with different subjects within science emerging, such as astronomy, biology, and physics. Institutions and communities devoted to science were founded.[1] Isaac Newton's book Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687) (English: Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy) reflects the use of the term natural philosophy in the 17th century. Even in the 19th century, the work that helped define much of modern physics bore the title Treatise on Natural Philosophy (1867).

In the German tradition, Naturphilosophie (philosophy of nature) persisted into the 18th and 19th centuries as an attempt to achieve a speculative unity of nature and spirit, after rejecting the scholastic tradition and replacing Aristotelian metaphysics, along with those of the dogmatic churchmen, with Kantian rationalism. Some of the greatest names in German philosophy are associated with this movement, including Goethe, Hegel, and Schelling. Naturphilosophie was associated with Romanticism and a view that regarded the natural world as a kind of giant organism, as opposed to the philosophical approach of figures such as John Locke and others espousing a more mechanical philosophy of the world, regarding it as being like a machine.[citation needed]
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According to Kuhn's vision, scientific development is made up of three main components: Paradigm, namely a set of universally recognized principles, methodological processes and cultural concepts that refers to the work of the “scientific community” of a certain era.Sep 24, 2018
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Science and humans in general advances in large part through trial and error.

Run an experiment and see what happens. Thomas Edison had very little technical knowledge and was almost entirety empirical.

On the other had Einstein was theoretical building on existing theories and ex[experiments.

As to methodical, it reduces to the Scientific Method. Simple in form but complex in practice.

1, Form hysteresis
2. Test hypothesis.
4. Accept hypothesis.
4. Reformulate and retest.
5. Reject hypothesize.

An empirical method that over time zeros in on truth.

Processes evolve through tarantula human processes, how our brains are wired.

Ancient Zog figured out how to control fire and cook food.

Imaging and creating spear tips for hunting evolved.

People figured out how to spin stabilize arrows with feathers without a formal science.

There are chimps who quarry stones and chip them into tools to crack nuts, without a language.

Companies and groups evolve their own methodologies specific to tasks at hand. All without any formal guide.
 
steve_bank said:
According to Kuhn's vision, scientific development is made up of three main components: Paradigm, namely a set of universally recognized principles, methodological processes and cultural concepts that refers to the work of the “scientific community” of a certain era.Sep 24, 2018
Click to expand...

Science and humans in general advances in large part through trial and error.

Run an experiment and see what happens. Thomas Edison had very little technical knowledge and was almost entirety empirical.

On the other had Einstein was theoretical building on existing theories and ex[experiments.

As to methodical, it reduces to the Scientific Method. Simple in form but complex in practice.

1, Form hysteresis
2. Test hypothesis.
4. Accept hypothesis.
4. Reformulate and retest.
5. Reject hypothesize.

An empirical method that over time zeros in on truth.

Processes evolve through tarantula human processes, how our brains are wired.

Ancient Zog figured out how to control fire and cook food.

Imaging and creating spear tips for hunting evolved.

People figured out how to spin stabilize arrows with feathers without a formal science.

There are chimps who quarry stones and chip them into tools to crack nuts, without a language.

Companies and groups evolve their own methodologies specific to tasks at hand. All without any formal guide.
Click to expand...
I tend to agree but I also am maybe a bit extreme in my application of kuhn and I think the really only useful meaning to the word truth is expectation aligning with experience. We don't zero in on it at all, we just make more useful models that reflect our learning to navigate the environments in which we find ourselves.
 
The dismissal of philosophy arises I think from the misapprehension that philosophers are trying to find answers the same way science is, but by different methods. But that is not philosophy’s role. It’s not really about finding answers but about raising questions.
 
For example, Steve lists five steps to the scientific method. Philosophers ask, are you sure? See Feyerabend, for example. Philosophers ask, is falsification really a necessary condition for doing science? Does this mean that string theory is/is not science? What demarcates science from non-science? (Demarcation Problem.) Is there really a bright, clear line between the two?
 
Science says, this is our theory. Philosophy says, theories are underdetermined. So it goes.
 
Yeah, the demarcation problem is still central and people tend to use some naive view/line demarking it all the time without understanding what the objections or limits are. I know I do anyway and I see others not acknowledge when they do it so I assume it's kind of basic.
 
Everyone has a philosophy of sorts. Is yours a considered, rational philosophy that you took some time developing in concert with the wise who came before you? Or some hackneyed, frequently contradictory thing you scrambled together from pop influences and passing emotions? That is the question.
 
There was, and still may be, a philosophical tradition of rationalism, in which it was or is thought that you could figure stuff out just by thinking real hard. Empiricism decisively eclipsed that.
 
Is that rational? Why would you trust the senses to the exclusion of your sensory processing unit? Use the one to refine the other, not replace it. These are components of the same machine.
 
Testy Calibrate said:
Yeah, the demarcation problem is still central and people tend to use some naive view/line demarking it all the time without understanding what the objections or limits are. I know I do anyway and I see others not acknowledge when they do it so I assume it's kind of basic.
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The demarcation problem prompted the philosopher Brad Monton to object to the Kitzmiller decision, here.
 
This is a sentence from the abstract at the beginning of the paper (referring to the decision given by the judge):
The way to refute intelligent design is not by declaring it unscientific, but by showing that the empirical evidence for design is not there.

However, the important point to note is that the judge was not giving a philosophical or scientific decision, but a legal one.
 
Spacetime Inhabitant said:
This is a sentence from the abstract at the beginning of the paper (referring to the decision given by the judge):
The way to refute intelligent design is not by declaring it unscientific, but by showing that the empirical evidence for design is not there.

However, the important point to note is that the judge was not giving a philosophical or scientific decision, but a legal one.
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Yes, I have mixed feelings about Monton’s paper, but he raises valid philosophical concerns. Of course he is really saying that the demarcation problem cannot be resolved by judicial fiat.
 
pood said:
Spacetime Inhabitant said:
This is a sentence from the abstract at the beginning of the paper (referring to the decision given by the judge):
The way to refute intelligent design is not by declaring it unscientific, but by showing that the empirical evidence for design is not there.

However, the important point to note is that the judge was not giving a philosophical or scientific decision, but a legal one.
Click to expand...

Yes, I have mixed feelings about Monton’s paper, but he raises valid philosophical concerns. Of course he is really saying that the demarcation problem cannot be resolved by judicial fiat.
Click to expand...
It can, if the judge says it can.

;)
 
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