h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Philosophy is not taught at schoool in English-speaking countries. This leads to an opinion among school-leavers that they have been taught a series of unarguable facts (no wonder I thought school was dull). This is fine in the case of, say, history (too late now), but with the science subjects it gives the impression that everything has already been decided. Things become a little cloudier at university, but the empirical ideas that underlie scientific method have still not been investigated.

Without philosophy, science falls into dogma. Thoughts?

This is a problem with the way Science is taught, not with the lack of a separate Philosophy subject. Real Science teaches that nothing is ever proved, but that good evidence is all you need.

I think what he means is we are never told that science actually has a dogma. It presumes certains things. Like that reality is real. All things that humans in general assume as well, so no big deal I think.

Oh, and of course in "science" class we are taught alot about what science has found out. Not really anything about how, as in the scientific method.

Science tries to explain HOW nature works, by creating , checking and if necessary rejecting theories explaining and predicting phenomena.

Religion just states THAT things are and generally ignore or reject everything contradicting with the "teachings".

I know how it works. I just meant you aren't taught much about the scientific method in school. I didn't really find out untill I read a book about comsology how science really works.

BTW David Hume is probably good to read for stuff about the basis of science and such.

About 40 years ago, I read a book called "the Philosophy of Physics" or something like that. It gave me a lot of background.
Alas I had to return it to the library, and I could (or would) not afford to buy it.

Please don't dismiss history as being 'Fact' - its just relative opinion based on selective evidence. It is constantly changing depending on the values and world view of the observor. Bit like science really...

Also nowadays because of political correctnes, we are revising a lot of it.

Coming from an English-speaking country, I was not taught philosophy, so I am probably not well placed to talk about it. If it has to do with the teaching of thinking and how people arrive at conclusions and develop mental hypotheses about the world, I would fully concur with the idea. If we are not told how to think or to reason, then the distinction between faith in science and faith in religion blurs somewhat.

Why do most of us accept that dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago? Why do most of us accept evolution as a standard biological process? Why do we accept that the viruses cause the 'flu? In reality, most of us have not personally teased through the evidence, or have gone through the rigourous process of elimination necessary to establish these statements as scientific "facts". Most of the time, we accept these as facts because they appear reasonable, and they are accepted as facts by people who we would expect know about such things. If this is the way we go about accepting facts, how is it different to accepting items of religious dogma?

I am not implying that these statements are wrong (indeed I strongly *believe* that they are right), but I still have to accept that my belief in these facts is not 10,000 miles removed from an acceptance of a religious belief.

Good question.

Good evidence is not enough if you don't know how or why you are using it. Science used to be considered part of philosophy. Confronting assumptions (the world is flat and the sun revolves around it, etc.) is a big deal, I reckon. Recently science has become almost detached from philosophy, and is all the poorer for it, even if it does make things easier for scientists, especially when moral arguments get in the way.

Without the detachment of philosophical reasoning, scientists cannot examine their own methods, and any claims at being objective are laughable.

Dear all,

I studied the Philosophy of Science as an undergraduate, and it's fascinating. Can I recommend "What is this thing called Science?" by Alan Chalmers? In my search to remember who it was by, I see that a new edition is out, which I can't speak for, but the older one was very good.

A few questions to give you a flavour of the subject:

What is science for? To give accurate predictions or to show how reality is? (Galilleo cunningly argued that the the earth might not really move around the sun, but that predicting the movement of the planets was much easier if you pretended it did...)

What is it for one theory to be better than another?

Is observation really "neutral" or is it theory dependent?

What is "proof"?

And so on and so on....

I agree with Jack Naples - all scientists should do some philosophy of science.....

Best wishes

Otto.

>> Without the detachment of philosophical reasoning, scientists cannot examine their own methods, and any claims at being objective are laughable.

Jack, any examples of this? Just curious...

Woodpigeon

Good question. I would cite the deterministic outlook in Genetics (ie all nature no nurture), the fudge factors in eg sub-atomic physics (some very small particles are posited to exist via circumstantial evidence) and the whole farrago over whether light was a particle or wave. And above all, the general tendency to mathematicise problems, leading to linear thinking, with its concomitant self-contradiction and overcategorisation.

On the softer science side, there's 99% of Noam Chomsky's linguistic output.

Up till now I saw a lot of arguments how science works, and that philosophy should be needed.

Can anyone tell me what philosophy is and how it is supposed to work?
As far as I know it's just a person sitting in a chair thinking how the universe should behave without any relation to subjective or objective reality.

Hi Marjin,

At the risk of appearing big-headed or self-prompting, try A617843 for what philosophy is.

In response to Woodpigeon's earlier request, here's an example of the problems of science. I don't go as far as to reject science out of hand, but I think it needs to be much more cautious about its claims and a lot more self-reflective....

Observation is usually thought to be at the heart of scientific method, and is supposed to be what guides the choice of different theories. It is supposed to be objective. However....

What do you see when you look at an x-ray? It depends on your training - I see blurs, a medical student sees a ribcage, a specialist sees three broken ribs, two cracked ribs, lung damage etc etc etc. So what you observe depends upon what you know - in other words, what theory or theories you are currently using. So how can observation be neutral?

Now, one response would be to try and distinguish between observation (which is objective) and interpretation (which is theory-dependent), but I don't think that this is much use as an objection. Because we cannot make sense of phenomena or communicate ideas or opinions about it without interpretation. When I see an object in front of me, the act of me calling it "keyboard" is a theory-dependent act of interpretation. So how can observation play a neutral role in deciding between theories?

Best wishes

Otto.

Thanks Otto. I really have to be quicker off the draw. Anyway, here's what I had:

.. and science is all about wearing a white coat, putting things in test tubes and torturing monkeys. 't spijt me, Marjin, but it's not a competition. I said that science is all the poorer for having split off from philosophy. You could say science is distilled philosophy, if you like, but it still needs the cauldron of ideas to feed on, as the great scientists have been aware.

As for what philosophy is, ask a dozen philosophers that question, eight will give you different answers, three won't talk to you and one will slap you round the face with a wet fish. They're not a helpful bunch, but between them they'd probably tell you that philosophy of science and epistemology are the areas most relevant to science (and ethics? I think so) and give you some interesting books to check out. Hanson's Patterns of Discovery is one I'd recommend.

Otto, can I say that your Philosophy article is excellent. Thanks for that! I have been doing some reading on Critical Thinking recently without realising that it was, in fact, a mainstay of classical philosophy as you describe it. I feel strongly that this should be something on all school curriculums, as it is a tool that could serve many uses beyond the hackneyed science/religion argument.

It seems sometimes that "cutting-edge" science, bored with the machinations of day-to-day reality, has flung itself into a sort of theoretical cul-de-sac, where observation is even optional. For instance, black holes, dark matter, etc, have no tangible evidence supporting their existence. They originally were born as theoretical constructs, and subsequently scientists have gone bananas looking for evidence to support their theories (remember the aether?). Is this not a distortation of the scientific method at its most basic? And, when Hawking and co start postulating about the origins of the universe, is it not just possibly a hugely imaginative flight of fancy, which the rest of the world has been happy to indulge, given that few of us would understand (and therefore not be in a position to contradict) anyway? Hmmm.

Woodpigeon

Hi Woodpigeon,

I think it depends what you think science is for.

Is it to tell us "what exists and how it works"?
Or to provide the best possible account for phenomena and the best possible predictions for what's going to happen next.

The two aren't quite the same. I don't know much science, but it seems that both black holes, the aether theory, and Newtonian physics explained phenomena and offer(ed) predictions, even if it's not clear that they are, strictly speaking, true.

My GCSE physics course was simplified so that it could be understood, but was essentially a useful fiction. My teacher used to start explanations with "This isn't strictly true, but...." Perhaps science at a higher level is also like that - "this isn't strictly proveable, but...." or "there's no real evidence for this but it does explain the phenomena....

Best wishes

Otto

Otto, Woodpigeon,
I would love to go on deeper with the discussions, but I am at w*rk now, and I am supposed to do something my boss finds usefull.

Just a question.
Otto, why the dutch sentence?