Roger,
I guess my hackles went up a bit at the notion that something gets to be scientific based on the judgment of a philosopher of science. Most of the philosci I have read has been based on trying to get at the essence of what scientists do when they are successful.
Every scientist gets taught a lot of philosophy of science in their introductory courses … the particular scientific ideology that infuses their specialty. Much of this is harmless within the field, but turns out to be absolute junk when it is exported to other fields, as when psychologist have physics envy. There is a lot of this sort of ideology that floats around the table at FRIAM. There is something about having this sort of thing inflicted on one in graduate school that makes one want to inflict it on others. So one of the values of having a good philosopher of science around for is to undermine the assertions of specialists in one field or another, or of one school or another within a field, that there is one, and only one way, to do science. An example was Joshua Epstein’s assertion, some years back, that “Good theories don’t predict”, which apparently was gospel in the simulation crowd, and flaming nonsense elsewhere.
The other peril in all of this is the scientist who asserts that he has no philosophy … he just does good science.
Nick
From: Friam [mailto:[hidden email]] On Behalf Of Roger Critchlow
Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2013 2:40 PM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] pluralism in science
On Thu, Apr 11, 2013 at 1:30 PM, Douglas Roberts <[hidden email]> wrote:
>> So not only do phenomena worth studying emerge at different levels of organization,
>> but the emerging phenomena at a level of organization are amenable to different disciplines of study
>> which may all be judged "scientific" by a philosopher of science.
This phrase struck me, and this will sound like a dumb question, but humor me: What is a philosopher of science? And what value do they provide? Serious question.
The author of the book is a faculty member at Stanford University who identifies as a philosopher of science. She wrote a book. She presumably teaches classes, writes scholarly articles, and reviews the writings of other scholars.
She identifies the different ways of studying human behavior as equally "scientific", while the popular science literature, the grant competition process, and the disciplines themselves tend to treat the alternatives as mutually exclusive possible truths, in a conflict from which one shall emerge triumphant.
So which question is the serious one? Taken together, you are expressing skepticism of philosophy by asking a question about values. That is as close to the origins of western philosophy as you can get without directly quoting Socrates.
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