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Comment by kwhitefoot | Hacker News Reader

He might have changed the way a few scientists and a few more philosophers think about science but most people including most practising scientists don't think about such things at all. The general public, I suspect, isn't even aware that there is a 'way the world looked at science' much less that there is a different way of looking at it.

I wouldn't have bothered writing this rant except that the sloppy use of words like 'world' when all that can really be meant is something like 'the world of science' or possibly 'the views of some academic observers of science' is one of the defining characteristics of journalism (both high brow and mass market). When one claims far more than is plausible one does a disservice to the truth and misleads the interested lay person and when that person discovers that the claim is untrue the reputations not only of the journalist but also of the original work suffer.

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> He might have changed the way a few scientists and a few more philosophers think about science but most people including most practising scientists don't think about such things at all. The general public, I suspect, isn't even aware that there is a 'way the world looked at science' much less that there is a different way of looking at it.

There's a word for the state of these scientists and laypeople: ignorance.

Edit to add some substance to the name-calling:

There's a certain perspective held by many scientists that the scientific method can and will describe the purposes and meaning behind every phenomena both natural and man-made that have any relevance or importance to our lives as humans. If those holding this perspective grant that valuable knowledge lies outside the ability of science to observe and explain, they tend to view it as irrelevant and frivolous. Those who hold this perspective tend to view philosophy as mere wordplay, and the idea of studying science from the perspective of philosophy (as Kuhn did) as pointless or an usurpation of their position at the top of the intellectual ladder.

Feynman embodied this attitude when he said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

It's a belligerent and proud ignorance that puts a black stain on the practice of science today, and an attitude that threatens some of the most valuable academic disciplines in the humanities, to the detriment of our culture.

My brief statement above was meant to call attention to this belligerent ignorance and poke fun at it a little bit.

Can you offer a bit more than name calling. That's what you get mostly in the Guardian comment section and it's pretty depressing.

Yes, updated. Sorry to have (hopefully temporarily) made this thread look like a Guardian comment section...

> Feynman embodied this attitude when he said, "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

Your comment still does not explain how philosophy of science should be useful to scientists. It would be much more convincing if it did.

See also Barnett Newman's use of the same metaphor in reference to aesthetics.

Self-awareness is always a good thing, no?

Kuhn's key point is that scientists (like many humans) tend to be herd animals. When you get results that are inconsistent with the public record, not to mention current dogma, there's a tendency to dig seriously for systematic errors. And when you start getting results that are consistent with the public record, you tend to get on with the writeup. Being aware of that stereotypic behavior is the first step in being free of it. No?

I agree, but doesn't this mean that scientists should read about the history of science, or sociology of science, not philosophy of science?

All of them!

And anyway, those are all artificial categories, I think.

I attempted to address this above, in a reply to a sibling of your request.

My reading of Feynman is a little different: I think the point is that philosophy of science has only analysed history so far and has never by itself brought about a change in the way science is done.

This is not to say that the philosophy is useless or that it will never influence science in the future - Feynman is just stating how things have been.

Put another way, I simply don't see philosophy of science as it is helping someone do better science. I would be very interested if this were false.

Feynman had the luxury of working in a dynamic field - not one that had been stuck eating its own regurgitations and chewing its cud for hundreds of years and needed a fresh start, like physics in Newton's time.

This is a popular view that philosophers have about scientists, but as usual it fails to mention how exactly philosophy of science has been or is to be useful to scientists. Ironically, science has been very influential in advancing the state of philosophy.

This is a popular view that philosophers have about scientists, but as usual it fails to mention how exactly philosophy of science has been or is to be useful to scientists.

Wouldn't Karl Popper's work on emphasizing the importance of falsification be an example of how philosophy of science was useful to scientists?

When did those ideas become widespread?

My parents, both scientists educated in the 1950s, never heard of them. They followed a pretty simplistic notion of scientific methodology, that mainly revolved around intellectual honesty: Report everything that you observe, and be willing to change your beliefs when confronted with new information.

I never heard of Popper or Kuhn until after I finished my science degree, and then, only in the context of debates about evolution versus creationism. But I don't know if I'm typical or not.

When did those ideas become widespread?

I honestly don't know. I'd always assumed that all of that happened well before I was born, but never bothered looking for any exact dates. It's just something I've always been exposed to, and have always taken the importance of falsification as a given.

A quick search turns up this[1] from Wikipedia:

"In work beginning in the 1930s, Popper gave falsifiability a renewed emphasis as a criterion of empirical statements in science."

OTOH, the entry on Popper at Plato[2] says this:

"However, in the 1970's a series of papers published by researchers such as Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum in particular revealed fundamental defects in Popper's formal definitions of verisimilitude."

which suggest that his work had achieved enough signficance by the 1970's that other people were basing work on it (and in this case, perhaps refuting bits of it).

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

[2]: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/

Miller, Tichý, and Grünbaum are philosophers. He definitely had a big influence on philosophy of science, but the question is to what extent he had an influence on science. The works of physicists before 1930 are so sophisticated that I honestly can't imagine that they didn't understand these ideas and more already. These weren't some dark ages; the Michelson-Morley experiment was done in 1887!

The idea of falsification suffers from three issues: (1) it's binary true or false (2) it's asymmetric (falsifying a theory T vs falsifying the theory not T) and (3) it's kind of vague what constitutes falsification. Bayesian incorporation of evidence into beliefs arguably gives a superior solution to the problem, and Laplace (1749 - 1827) was already fully aware of this.

Indeed, incorporating new evidence into existing beliefs, albeit without involving statistics, was described by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century.

I don't know the exact history, but I suspect that people were doing quantitative science before we developed a good grasp of statistics.

Also, both Kuhn and Popper endeavored to describe science as it was already being done.

The scientific process, since it is based on empirical observation, can only address entities and phenomena that possess a position in time and space[1]. Asking it to directly address subjective subject matter is like asking a flashlight to study the darkness.

Philosophy may not be directly beneficial to the narrow practice of science, but it is critical to almost every activity surrounding it.

For example, philosophy can help scientists answer questions like:

- Does the pain caused during animal research justify the knowledge obtained from it?

- Should we fund scientists to study better methods of farming, or atomic bombs?

- Should we publish the details of the specific mutations required to produce a superbug from bird flu, or omit those details from our methods?

- What is scientific knowledge, and how does it differ from other types of knowledge?

And on and on and on.

Let's look at Feynmann's statement again, that "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds."

We're supposed to read that and think 'Hah, yeah - birds don't know and can't know anything about ornithology, how can it be useful to them?!'

Of course it can be useful to them. We study birds to better understand them and their behavior. We use the results of ornithology to make their lives better by answering questions like:

- What can we do to minimize the impact of wind-power generators on the migratory patterns of birds?

- How can we save and preserve this near-extince species of bird?

- How do birds influence the spread of jungles and other forests?

And on and on and on. Ornithologists study birds, and the interaction between birds and humans - of course such knowledge will be useful to birds.

In the same way, an individual scientist can be completely ignorant of philosophy and still be a good scientist - but philosophy (and other non-scientific disciplines) support and inform every aspect of life around her job. If she wants to explore the ethical ramifications of her work, needs to justify support of her work, or discuss the process of science contrast to other disciplines, she must begin to use the terminology and processes of philosophy, not science.

[1] 'Soft sciences', such as psychology, sociology, economics, etc. attempt to study subjective phenomena but do so by directly observing behavior of the entities/systems under study.

Note in parent comment the phrase "it fails to mention how exactly philosophy of science has been or is to be useful to scientists". You are arguing for some kind of general usefulness of philosophy to scientists, but the parent comment was much more narrow and specific than that: it was about usefulness of philosophy of science to the practice of science.

> We're supposed to read that and think 'Hah, yeah - birds don't know and can't know anything about ornithology, how can it be useful to them?!'

I think you misunderstood the quote. Birds will not fly any differently whether ornithologists study them or not. That is what it means that ornithology is not useful to birds: the birds will not use ornithology to make decisions about flying. Feynman, as a practicing scientist, was well-placed to say whether philosophy of science informed his practice of science, so his comment absolutely does not reflect his ignorance.

> but philosophy (and other non-scientific disciplines) support and inform every aspect of life around her job.

The things that you listed won't inform how a scientist does science, so they don't really address the core of the question.

But the original assertion does not mention any specifics: "it fails to mention how exactly philosophy of science has been or is to be useful to scientists"

It just says "useful to scientists". I feel that my argument shows quite clearly how philosophy can be useful to scientists - maybe not in the actually practice of doing science (as that is practicing science - not practicing philosophy), but definitely useful for the scientist when he attempts to integrate his scientific findings or practice with the surrounding culture.

One might take this question, 'How is philosophy useful to the practice of science', flip it around, and come at it using your approach:

How is science useful to to the practice of philosophy?

Well, the answer there, since we've focussed on the actual practice instead of general utility, is that science isn't very useful to the practice of philosophy.

EDIT: I should qualify that last statement - scientific discoveries, when they overlap with assertions made by philosophers, can help to invalidate inaccurate philosophical assertions, and lend support to valid statements. So it can be helpful during the validation stage of the philosophical process.

There are good answers to that question, but let's answer that in the same style that you answered, albeit a lot more concretely: cars rely on science, philosophers use cars, therefore science is useful to philosophy.

Cars do not rely on science, primarily. The existence of cars is primarily due to engineers developing technology (a different process than that of science), not scientists doing science.

If you believe that science can explain everything, your conceptual map widens the concept of 'science' to include practically everything that refers to the objective world, making the concept less useful for precise thought about epistemology.

And philosophy is more directly useful to scientists than cars are to philosophers. For one thing you're comparing a concrete artifact to epistemological processes. We're comparing processes, not artifacts. The concepts developed by philosophers have direct relevance to scientists, see my examples above.

I don't think what Feynman said was any more belligerent than kicking an unwanted guest out of one's house.

I agree with the sibling comment[0] on the interpretation of Feynman's quote. Also, rejecting the usefulness of philosophy of science doesn't imply accepting the view that the scientific method can and will describe the purposes and meaning behind every phenomena both natural and man-made that have any relevance or importance to our lives as humans. I think the following is a good summary of Feynman's lack of commitment to any philosophical viewpoint[1]:

I'm just looking to find out more about the world and if it turns out there is a simple ultimate law which explains everything, so be it, that would be very nice to discover.

If it turns out it's like an onion with millions of layers and we're just sick and tired of looking at the layers, then that's the way it is, but whatever way it comes out its nature is there and she's going to come out the way she is, and therefore when we go to investigate it we shouldn't predecide what it is we're trying to do except to try to find out more about it. If you say your problem is, why do you find out more about it, if you thought you were trying to find out more about it because you're going to get an answer to some deep philosophical question, you may be wrong. It may be that you can't get an answer to that particular question by finding out more about the character of nature, but I don't look at it [like that]. My interest in science is to simply find out about the world, and the more I find out the better it is, like, to find out.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10176173 [1] http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/servlet/DCARead?standardNo=0738...

I don't know what Feynman was talking about, when he said that. Much philosophy of science is bullshit, in my considered opinion. But Kuhn's and Popper's work, for example, are not. And I'd be very surprised if Feynman claimed that they were.

Also, maybe Feynman was just fucking with the interviewer. He was like a physics version of Lenny Bruce. But warmer, like Bill Clinton.

I read Kuhn in my second year of grad school and his bit on the structure of a scientific paper I found very helpful. His section on what goes in an introduction to was supremely helpful in demonstrating how to frame your work so that it finds acceptance. After reading that portion, I observed that I was getting much nicer peer reviews, and I've since recommended it to several people.

To be honest, Kuhn's work had its influence on my academic (and not so academic) writing: no more invoking the word "paradigm" in vain. :)

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