Robert, Nick, et. al,
The question "What has philosophy done for science recently" seems
odd. In the two fields with which I am most familiar, biology and psychology,
there is an obvious, continuous, huge influence. A small minority of the
"Big Names" in these fields have always been people whose primary
contributions were philosophical: Stephen J. Gould, Richard Dawkins, Daniel
Dennett, Jerry Fodor, etc. Their direct influence on the course of empirical
study is undeniable.
While I don't know who was important in what specific discoveries in other
fields, I did some quick browsing of Harvard's website. Here are some
interesting factoids:
*The Physics department lists 19 professors with specialty in "Theoretical
X" (X = Atomic, Molectular, and Optical Physics; Biophysics; Condensed
Matter Physics; High Energy Physics/String Theory; Mesoscopic) and 2 with
specialty in History of Physics. This looks like about 1/3 of the faculty, most
of the rest are explicitly experimental.
*The Chemistry department lists 5 professors simply under the heading
"Theoretical"
*The Mathematics department is pretentious enough to not list research
interests of anyone under a full professor. However, recent seminars include
"A brief overview of the philosophy of mathematics", a few years ago
they hosted the "International Conference on the Unity of
Mathematics" and they have numerous graduate level courses titled
"Theory of X"
*The Philosophy department lists 5 people who specialize in the philosophy of a
specific science (biology, quantum mechanics, cognitive science / perception, psychology,
physics) There is also one person (Peter Koellner) with a specialization
including "Mathematical logic, set theory, philosophy of mathematics,
philosophy of physics"
Now, I don't know exactly what all these people do, and I'm sure I'm
misrepresenting a few of them, but at least a few of them must be philosophers
in exactly the sense desired. I'd assume that many other research schools have
those people in comparable numbers (or larger numbers, as Cornell's philosophy
department lists a handful of computer scientists, computer engineers, and mathematicians
as available to supervise graduate students). I also assume that these
philosophers wouldn't be kept around, and especially wouldn’t be kept around at
Haaaaa’verd if they didn't contribute something to their fields.
To pick a cheap and easy example, I'm not aware of any "scientific"
work done by Einstein (i.e., work that was clearly empirical and hence
obviously not philosophical), but I suspect he contributed at least a little
bit to modern physics. The day to day life of an active physicist might not
involve thinking about how his work stemmed from a theoretical paper written in
1905, but that doesn't mean the connection isn't there.
Eric
On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 06:54 PM, "Nicholas Thompson" <[hidden email]>
wrote:
Great
post, Robert. Thanks.
Would
you agree that we could readily find examples of the recent import of
scientific ideas into philosophy? So the modern traffic does seem to move
in at least that direction.
So,
to look for contradictions to your proposal, I need to find cases where
philosophical ideas have found their way into scientific practice. Would
Bayes be an example? I realize that Bayes himself isnt modern, but
there seem to be a moment in the sixties when "we" in psychology were
required to start thinking about statistics differently and it certainly wasnt
coming from our field. Another example might be Thomas Kuhn.
I
am guilty as charged by Doug of using this list to pick people's brains, so if
you don't want to have yours picked, just leave this alone.
thanks
for the post,
Nick
Nicholas S. Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology,
Clark University (nthompson@...)
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/naturaldesigns/
-----
Original Message -----
From: Robert
Holmes
To: glen e. p. ropella;The Friday Morning
Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 7/13/2009 8:21:31 PM
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Analytic philosophy -
Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I think the argument (I
paraphrase) "all math/science is traceable back to
Aristotle/Parmenides/Zeno/pick-your-philosopher, therefore everything
subsequent is mere derivations of their original thoughts" is not
completely sound. It's probably reasonable up to the period of Newton,
Descartes and Leibniz: these people were philosophers and scientists.
As has been pointed out several times, there was no real distinction between
the two practices: they were just the one entity - natural philosophy.
But then came the Scientific
Revolution and during the 16th-18th centuries both
disciplines professionalized and - for all but a
few exceptional individuals - they split. Philosophers did
philosophy, scientists did science. Philosophers might comment on what was
happening in science but that does not mean that they were driving it or
suggesting the questions that scientists should ask. Philosophy might comment
on science but - for most practitioners of science - it did not inform science.
My own experience bears this
out. I'm a physicist and have worked in research environments all my
professional life. When my colleagues and I discuss research priorities, or
potential areas for study, or appropriate methodologies we refer to the work of
other scientists, not philosophers. I don't think this is unusual. I strongly
suspect that it is the work of other scientists and the lessons we learn from
our scientific mentors that drive our scientific endeavors.
-- Robert
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