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by bmcleod
5107 days ago
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Philosophy of Science is an extremely broad field. And like any academic field it's easy enough to find crazy stuff at the edges. I do think far more scientists would benefit from a bit more of a look at some of the more established philosophers of the last century. It seems that most gained some knowledge of Popper but nowhere near enough people are really familiar with Kuhn's work(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/thomas-kuhn/). Taking the time to think critically about what you're doing and what it would really take to change your views is critical to actually being open to broad possibilities. |
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Theoretical physicists are particularly prone to lapsing, in later career, into armchair philosophy without bothering to actually read anything in philosophy of the past 100 years. That tends, unfortunately, to result in them producing philosophy that has flashes of insight mixed with stuff that could be a lot better if only they had read some of the existing literature, and addressed the obvious problems with some of the standard positions (which too often they reinvent).
Of course, philosophers could understand more science too, but I actually think there is more effort being made in that direction: philosophy of science programs are increasingly requiring substantial amounts of technical coursework, and it's a huge plus, for advancement, if you publish at least a few articles in technical journals, too. But in the other direction, there might actually be less philosophy instruction in science programs than there was 100 years ago now (surface-level understandings of Popperian falsificationism seem to be about as far as anyone gets, including my own formal education it must be said). This seems like a recent affliction, too: the early-20th-c scientists (Einstein, Bohr, etc.) were actually quite well-read in the relevant parts of philosophy. Heck, folks like Alan Turing published in peer-reviewed philosophy journals.