I’m not sure how much philosphers helped with this.
I feel that a lot of people claim that philosophy is useless when what they wanted to say is that professional philosophers are useless.
When a scientist said this:
they were conducting philosophy, so how can it be claimed that scientists do not need philosophy?
It could be argued that philosophers of science never helped scientists in their philosophizing, but that is a different statement than scientists not needing philosophy.
Personally, I think that scientists need to pay more attention to what the philosophers of science are discussing. Historically, this used to be more the case.
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That wasn’t my claim. What I was saying was that genealogical adam is an example of a certain kind of clear thinking - of discerning what science shows and what it doesn’t show - and that in my personal experience, learning about philosophy has been helpful for this kind of thinking.
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I would put it differently. I would say that unphilosophical physicists tend to have a dim view of philosophers.
I wonder if John Polkinghorne, who was an advanced physicist, takes a dim view of philosophers. And certainly in the past some of the great minds of physics, such as Heisenberg, were very interested in philosophy.
I agree with the idea, but would broaden it. I think a good requirement would be that all science majors must take one course in either the history or science or the philosophy of science in order to graduate with the Bachelor’s degree. The course could be general (e.g., “history of science”) or discipline-specific (e.g., “philosophy of biology”). It could be taken at any time before graduation, whenever it fit most conveniently into the student’s timetable. And it could be taught by faculty within the science program, or by someone in another department (history, philosophy, etc.). This range of options would give science students plenty of flexibility.
This is standard in many Arts subjects. There are few undergrad Religious Studies programs where a course on “methods in the study of religion” or the like isn’t required. History programs often require a course on the nature of studying and writing about history. Most economics departments offer courses in the history of economic theory (though usually they aren’t compulsory, I think). Sociology, anthropology and other subjects routinely offer courses on the history/methodology of the field, where foundational assumptions are critically analyzed and debated. In some departments such courses are compulsory for majors. And of course, in traditional philosophy departments, frequently compulsory subjects included Logic and History of Philosophy (though in departments run by analytical philosophers or by deconstructionists, history of philosophy is generally treated with disrespect). The idea in all of this was that the purpose of a university wasn’t just to learn “stuff” about a subject-matter – to learn the latest and most updated facts, theories, methods, etc. It was also to think deeply about the methods the discipline uses to gain knowledge – how reliable they are, what possibly unwarranted assumptions might be being made, what prejudices or blinders (cultural or other) might be operating, etc. I think that is an essential part of learning any discipline.
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pevaquark:
Thanks for this link to the Carroll essay. A very good essay. Had I gone into physics, it would have been for Carroll’s motives.
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That’s because you are content with a certain narrow type of answer. The article by Sean Carroll, linked to above, is an excellent statement by a physicist about why science needs to deal with broader types of answer.
The kind of questioning and answering that advances one within one’s scientific profession is one thing; the kind of questioning and answering that is at the heart of what natural science is about, is another. Sean Carroll captures this distinction very well.
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Thanks. I’m all for clear thinking. Sadly, some of the more prominent Christian philosophers have not always been good a modeling clear thinking. I’m sure a good philosophy education can help with this, but do you really think that philosophy owns “clear thinking”?
People before/after him held chairs.Thats not it!
Attempts to unite are only important if they did unite. this did not happen and is not a accomplishment for trying.
I’m confident most people who know his name and have a image of him could not tell you what he accomplished to gain him the esteem as a great scientist and intelligent person.
The minority might muble about black holes or something.
This unlike great scientists they have hesard of from the past.
It won’t get better with time.
In fact you were corrected by another poster here. Making my point. Maybe you correct him?
Saying its great but not known threatens its that great. Important could include thousands. Yet he is held up as very notable. i don’t see why! i don’t think he did anything important to be noted or remembered unless one is remembering thousands of physicists in the last hundred years.
Whats his equation or patent?
Just a small sample of his most important works. The sentences after the semicolon are my attempts at translating his works to something understandable by laypeople in one sentence. If you want more clarifications on any of them I will be happy to provide them.
- Penrose-Hawking singularity theorems: showing that certain conditions in gravitational physics lead to singularities
- Gibbons–Hawking–York boundary term: figuring out an extra term that needs to be added in the fundamental equation of general relativity (that was missed by other scientists, including Einstein and Hilbert!)
- Bekenstein–Hawking entropy: Figuring out the correct numerical factor that goes in the equation for the thermodynamical entropy of a black hole
- Hawking radiation: Showing that black holes radiate
- Hartle-Hawking proposal: Coming up with the proposal that while there is a finite amount of time between now and the Big Bang, time might not have a boundary
- Soft hair on black holes: His latest work, showing that certain “almost symmetries” allow black holes to store information on their horizons
A physicist would be very happy with their career to come up with just one of the things in this list. Hawking came up with all six.
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I like your word FIGURE. that is what science is about.
Well a physicist might be happy with any one but most wouldn’t. i see the list as unimpressive relative to the esteem he was presented to the public.
these are ordinary discoveries, if accurate ones, and loads of scientists have this amount.
Proposals don’t count by the way!
Extrav terms on Einsteins stuff is trivial relative to Einstein and others who are actually remembered for accomplishments worthy of the public not interested in physics.
Thanks for the list but you prove my point.
Relative to the hAWKINGS story its chump change.
I don’t think Nobel thought it was much either?? and few nobels are esteemed as Hawkings was!
my suspicion was that Physics coming off the old crowd who did great progress needed new blood and Hawkings was the only one around.
Physics in fact stopped making news. Yet they thought it was so high and mightly they needed the number one person in it to be celebrated.
Yet his discoveris/patents were not worthy and I predict he will not be rememberd and stories will be done on WHY and WHY was he so esteemed??
you really think this is a gloriously superior list to hundreds/thousands of other physicists in the last decades??
Who are you to say what are ordinary discoveries and what are extraordinary discoveries? What makes you qualified to be such an arbiter?
No, the vast majority of scientist do not have this amount.
If it is trivial, why can’t Einstein himself figure it out?
Who the public find interesting is NOT what makes a great physicist. Here is another example: one of the most important scientist ever is Joseph Fourier, who is unknown to the public. Yet, his work is essential in the workings of most of modern electronics, as well as a vast amount of engineering upon which civilization is built. Is he not a great scientist because the public does not know or remember him?
By the way, I found it extremely difficult to read your post. Would you mind double-checking your sentences for grammar and spelling errors before posting?
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I suppose I have an angle on this because I did 6 years of scientific training for medicine - no philosophy. However, the Cambridge College system meant that I had coffee with philosophers talking about epistemology, mathematicians talking about the almost theological implications of their field, and so on.
My “liberating moment” was taking a course on social psychology, which in its own way was as intellectually restricted as the pure science, but (crucially) in a different way. It was like spending a few months with an Amazon tribe - you suddenly see there are different ways to see the world, and it makes you aware of the biases of your own.
Philosophy puts that on a considered and formal basis.
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Which is there is really no excuse for. Hopefully, more and more Christians begin to heed the command to “love God with all your mind” and start to turn the tide around.
No, but philosophy (or at least certain important branches of it) is about clear thinking in a way that other disciplines are not.
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I would say that philosophy encompasses approaches to generating knowledge which are not part of science. This is not knowledge about the world – that is the domain of science.
The first type of knowledge is that philosophy does is conceptual analysis (link is to SEP). That includes analysis of the concepts of science. Of course, as I indicated in my earlier post in this thread, if a philosopher wants to do credible analysis of scientific concepts, the philosopher must first develop a deep understanding of the relevant science.
Second is consideration of metaphysics: what is the natural of reality? of causality? of time? of mental versus physical? Here again there are many philosophers who discount a metaphysics which is not thoroughly grounded in the relevant science (eg metaphysics of time requires knowledge of GR).
Third is knowledge about norms: what makes something right or wrong? better or worse? Meaningful or not? Science is about causes, but causes simply are, they do not help decide norms.
There is nothing to stop scientists from doing philosophy. Issues arise, however, when scientists do not take the trouble to understand the philosophy first. Examples:
Lawrence Krauss thinking the answer of why the universe exists can be provided by quantum field theory in A Universe from Nothing
Richard Dawkins trying to do theology in his book The God Delusion.
Sam Harris thinking that science alone can determine ethics as discussed in his book The Moral Landscape .
I’ve read the short chapter on God in the Hawking book; he is making a brief version of the Krauss argument: He says we understand the laws of nature well enough to explain how the universe came into existence and how it evolved after that, so we do not need to believe in God. But that is not enough to explain the universe unless one accepts scientific laws as brute. Further, there are other reasons to have faith in God beyond whether or not science explains the world.
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Very well said!!
I can’t resist point out that atheists (such as Dawkins) do theology really poorly.
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Is that the time he tried to change meaning of the word ‘nothing’ to ‘something’?
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Hmmm, with this I agree completely. And I can’t say how much it bothered me when atheists (anti-theists more often than not) say “we have ‘laws’ so no God” when I can simply say “we have ‘laws’ so lawmaker” (paraphrasing here). Both arguments are equally valid (in my opinion), meaning, both are useless.
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