The Multidisciplinarian

Scientists, for the most part, make lousy philosophers.

Yesterday I made a brief post on the hostility to philosophy expressed by scientists and engineers. A thoughtful reply by philosopher of science Tom Hickey left me thinking more about the topic.

Scientists are known for being hostile to philosophy and for being lousy at philosophy when they practice it inadvertently. Scientists tend to do a lousy job even at analytic philosophy, the realm most applicable to science (what counts as good thinking, evidence and proof), not merely lousy when they rhapsodize on ethics.

But science vs. philosophy is a late 20th century phenomenon. Bohr, Einstein, and Ramsey were philosophy-friendly. This doesn’t mean they did philosophy well. Many scientists, before the rift between science (“natural philosophy” as it was known) and philosophy, were deeply interested in logic, ethics and metaphysics. The most influential scientists have poor track records in philosophy – Pythagoras (if he existed), Kepler, Leibnitz and Newton, for example. Einstein’s naïve social economic philosophy might be excused for being far from his core competency, but the charge of ultracrepidarianism might still apply. More importantly, Einstein’s dogged refusal to budge on causality (“I find the idea quite intolerable that an electron exposed to radiation should chose of its own free will…”) showed methodological – if not epistemic – flaws. Still, Einstein took interest in conventionalism, positivism and the nuances of theory choice. He believed that his interest in philosophy enabled his scientific creativity:

“I fully agree with you about the significance and educational value of methodology as well as history and philosophy of science. So many people today – and even professional scientists – seem to me like somebody who has seen thousands of trees but has never seen a forest. A knowledge of the historic and philosophical background gives that kind of independence from prejudices of his generation from which most scientists are suffering. This independence created by philosophical insight is – in my opinion – the mark of distinction between a mere artisan or specialist and a real seeker after truth.” – (Einstein letter to Robert Thornton, Dec. 1944)

So why the current hostility? Hawking pronounced philosophy dead in his recent book. He then goes on to perform a good deal of thought around string theory, apparently unaware that he is reenacting philosophical work done long ago. Some of Hawking’s philosophy, at least, is well thought.

Not all philosophy done by scientists fares so well. Richard Dawkins makes analytic philosophers cringe; and his excursions into the intersection of science and religion are dripping with self-refutation.

The philosophy of David Deutsch is more perplexing. I recommend his The Beginning of Infinity for its breadth of ideas, some novel outlooks, for some captivating views on ethics and esthetics, and – out of the blue – for giving Jared Diamond the thrashing I think he deserves. That said, Deutsch’s dogmatism is infuriating. He invents a straw man he names inductivism. He observes that “since inductivism is false, empiricism is as well.” Deutsch misses the point that empiricism (which he calls a misconception) is something scientists lean slightly more or slightly less toward. He thinks there are card-carrying empiricists who need to be outed. Odd as the notion of scientists subscribing to a named philosophical position might appear, Deutsch does seem to be a true Popperian. He ignores the problem of choosing between alternative non-falsified theories and the matter of theory-ladenness of negative observations. Despite this, and despite Kuhn’s arguments, Popper remains on a pedestal for Deutsch. (Don’t get me wrong; there is much good in Popper.) He goes on to dismiss relativism, justificationism and instrumentalism (“a project for preventing progress in understanding the entities beyond our direct experience”) as “misconceptions.” Boom. Case closed. Read the book anyway.

So much for philosophy-hostile scientists and philosophy-friendly scientists who do bad philosophy. What about friendly scientists who do philosophy proud. For this I’ll nominate Sean Carroll. In addition to treating the common ground between physics and philosophy with great finesse in The Big Picture, Carroll, in interviews and on his blog (and here), tries to set things right. He says that “shut up and calculate” isn’t good enough, characterizing lazy critiques of philosophy as either totally dopey, frustratingly annoying, or deeply depressing. Carroll says the universe is a strange place, and that he welcomes all the help he can get in figuring it out.

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Rµv – (1/2)Rgµv = 8πGTµv. This is the equation that a physicist would think of if you said “Einstein’s equation”; that E = mc2 business is a minor thing – Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here

Up until early 20th century philosophers had material contributions to make to the physical sciences – Neil deGrasse Tyson