Philosophy Of Science

[Politesse]

If science comes from philosophy, from what does philosophy come from? What guides philosophy?.

Dharma, obviously. Either that or The Chicken that laid The Egg.

 

[pood]

If science comes from philosophy, from what does philosophy come from? What guides philosophy?

If science is philosophy then philosophers should get themselves a lab coat, a pocket protector,a slide rule, and most importantly safety goggles. You never know when something will blow up in your face.

Philosophical thought experints can be dangerous.

You mean like Einstein’s Gedankens, influenced by Hume, that inspired relativity? Newton’s insight, never before achieved by anyone and not involving lab coats or safety goggles, that the earth is also falling toward a falling body?

 

[pood]

Two of the most remarkable insights in scientific history were from philosophical thought experiments. I guess engineer Steve finds them … dopey,

 

[pood]

Another philosophical thought experiment was Hugh Everett’s 1957 paper on the relative state formulation. I guess Steve would find that dopey, too. Myself, I wonder what Einstein, who died two years earlier, would have thought of it.

 

[pood]

John Dalton, who introduced atomic theory to chemistry, specifically acknowledged his debt to the blind philosopher John Gough. There are so many examples of this.

However, I expect shortly we shall again hear the bromidic mantra, “Philosophy bakes no bread.” Though maybe it bakes Twinkies.

 

[Jarhyn]

From reading the OP on Popper: he is correct insofar as that his philosophy of science as narrowing down the bounds on a real phenomena.

This ends up producing an abstract, if inversely derived view of the universe: it shows us something of the "shape" of the thing in some abstract but solidly real way. Our uncertainty has error bars, but these bars bound a real structure. To m it happens in the same way as that we don't know the true upper and lower bounds of the number of primes for regions we have not fully calculated of the number line, but we can and have narrowed our estimates in proven and real ways, and can confidently hold on that understanding.

Popper's is the view of science any engineer with any shred of hubris must inevitably have, that our ability to falsify that which is false, and prove that which is true within the remainder, and to test that in turn, that's what is needed to build new things from the understanding we have.

 

[bilby]

I have posted several times I worked with creationists who were very good engineers. They compartmentalize science and engineering.

Engineering in no way contradicts creationism. Indeed, many of the most intelligent creationists become engineers, because that discipline doesn't conflict with their beliefs. No compartmentalisation is necessary.

 

[Elixir]

Engineering in no way contradicts creationism. Indeed, many of the most intelligent creationists become engineers, because that discipline doesn't conflict with their beliefs. No compartmentalisation is necessary.

Lots of engineers are creationists, and the fact that they exist is oft cited by creationists as authoritative evidence that creationism is scientifically fine and dandy. Dembski, Behe et al get a devoted following for their nonsense, and even morons like "Hello my name is Kent Hovind"* get groupies. But "the guy I know who is an engineer" has even more credibility for the average YEC, than do people handing them complicated shit like "irreducible complexity".

(Let alone volcanoes blasting koalas from Mesopotamia to Australia)
* The opening line of Hovind's "dissertation"

 

[Politesse]

That the branch of the "sciences" most disconnected from active scientific research sometimes doesn't fire some people for hawking pseudoscience is not the boast some engineers think it is.

My husband is a functional safety engineer, and a good one. He attended the University of Michigan, and today earns a considerable sum of money, making sure the products of a certain notoriously successful graphics card company don't accidentally kill us all. In his college days, he was a Creationist as well. Unsurprising, because he grew up in a deeply conservative state, and his only education in the life sciences was an AP Biology class that taught "both sides of the debate. As such college did not directly, disabuse him of the dogmas his conservative childhood church had raised him with.

He did, however, pick up the basics of the scientific method, and more importantly, wound up in a branch of engineering that involves routine hypothesis testing on critical issues. It was inevitable, even though it was not immediate, that he would eventually realize the fact that his parents had obliged him to commit his life to a hypothesis that would not pass the most rudimentary barrage of fault testing. Thus, the work world did a better job of whittling away at his theological confidence than the university had. By twenty-five, he was a "spiritual Creationist" who no longer denied evolution and imagined Adam and Eve as Hominins. By thirty, he had abandoned Creationism altogether. A few years later, he left the church. It had no use for a scientifically trained mind, and he had no use for an institution that held his career back more than it helped.