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Comment by thsksbd | Hacker News Reader

PhD is a license to teach (i.e. doctor) philosophy. Specifically, in "science" fields, natural philosophy.

Natural philosophy was the original (and i think better) name for science, especially physics. It was understood to be an important subbranch of philosophy.

I think its better name because it elucidates an important epistemological difference: science is a method, not knowledge. I learn science when I learn about experimental design. Im not learning science when I learn about evolution; rather Im learning a theory, very likely to be true, that is almost impossible to put under scrutiny using the scientific method.

The Pythagorean theorem has no science and is 100% true. In fluids, Bernoulli devised experiments to demonstrate to his calculus illiterate colleagues what he had already mathematically proven.

Science is a bad term.

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> In fluids, Bernoulli devised experiments to demonstrate to his calculus illiterate colleagues what he had already mathematically proven.

Maybe I misunderstood you, but I have the feeling you're downplaying the importance of experiments in Physics. Once you mathematically prove something, you proved that a statement is true when given a certain set of axioms. This is enough in Mathematics, like your example of the Pythagorean theorem, but it isn't in Physics. The reason being that proving something Mathematically consistent isn't enough to prove that it reflects what happens in the real world. A famous example in pop science of this is string theory.

I also have some doubts about what you say regarding evolution theory, but I'm not familiar whit how biologists verified it. Maybe every time a new fossil is found we can consider it as an experiment that can add a data point in favor or against the theory?

Im about to jump in the shower, son cant go inti detail. Just that the best theories in physics, our best foundations, were not made by an incremental tic-toc theory-experiment cycle. There were bursts of genius that eventually got proven.

Im reading Truesdell's (America's greatest 20th century physicist?) book now where he goes through the history of fluid mechanics and the paucity of experiments. If I remember ill send you the reference

Truesdell is amazing, I like this quote:

"The computer: ruin of science and threat to mankind”

https://people.maths.ox.ac.uk/~ball/Miscelleaneous%20Article...

He nailed it for computers

"Experience, Theory and Experiment" from 1955 as found in "An Idiot's Fugitive Essay on Science" by Truesdell.

Bloody brilliant. 70 years ago he foresaw the problems of modern science.

Holy cow, I had not until today realized that "doctor" comes from "docere" (to teach). Thanks for enlightening me!

Which makes you wonder why a medical doctor is called that?

For the same reason social science is called science. When words start to become prestigious many will attach that word to what they do.

Social science is science. In what way is it not?

Lack of reproducibility results for one.

That's a problem in all the sciences right now: https://www.nature.com/articles/533452a

Because doctor comes from the passive doctus ('having been taught', i.e. learned) rather than the active docens ('teaching, instructing').

Not really. Doctor means "teacher" in classical Latin.

Good point. English has both actor (=someone who acts) and agent (=someone who acts) from agere = to act, and both doctor (=someone who teaches) and docent (=someone who teaches) from docere = to teach.

Because physicians are licensed to teach the practice of medicine.

that's the root of the word. The original four-wise distinction seems to have been Doctor of Medicine/Law/Natural Phylosophy/Theology. Just different kinds of knowledgeable people.

Interestingly enough I just realized in Italian there is an old word, "dotto" that literally would mean "someone who has been taught" but concretely is used in the sense of well educated, knowledgeable, wise, cultured.

Bologna, the home of the first university, has the nickname "la Dotta", i.e. the educated one.

> Im not learning science when I learn about evolution; rather Im learning a theory, very likely to be true, that is almost impossible to put under scrutiny using the scientific method.

the very definition of a "theory" in the scientific sense of the word (e.g. "theory of evolution") includes the ability to test it using the scientific method.

the wikipedia page goes into great detail: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_theory

and this is a good brief explanation: https://web.archive.org/web/20170709065046/http://science.ke...

Indeed.

Jumping to specifics, Evolution Theory is relatively easy to demonstrate on short time scales of under a year with fruit flies, and can also be demonstrated on longer timescales of five, ten, thirty years given patience .. with ongoing field observations of some two centuries now in various locations.

https://www.the-scientist.com/news-opinion/fruit-flies-evolv...

It wasn't a hit on evolution, I specifically stated that it is as true as anything lacking a mathematical proof can be.

And yes, I know about little bugs changing color and bacteria becoming resistant to antibiotics.

But, strictly speaking, that isnt what we're taught is "science" in 10th grade, is it? That's really an observation of what we cannot control fitting nicely into our theories.

The embarrassing thing about evolution is that biologists keep having to tweek it in ways that are bewildering if evolution is (I think better) understood as information theory. For example, why did biologists reject horizontal gene transfer?

Anyway the whole field is sitting atop of an ignored quantity-quality emergent behavior which is also the most interesting question.

Some of your points are very curious. Biologists did not reject horizontal gene transfer. Or at any rate it has been part of the canon for pretty much the last 60 years which is essentially forever in biology. (The mechanisms for heredity, i.e. DNA were only discovered in the early 1950s). Besides, scientists are always "tweaking" theories as you put it. More precisely, a fruitful and productive scientific program leads to more and more discovers and elaborations that have to be accomodated. Look at the changes in the Standard Model in particle physics. The current controversy is whether and why the Standard Model is no longer being "tweaked". In other words, some physicist wonder whether current research is no longer yielding discoveries that allow advances and hences changes or elaborations to the Standard Model.

Why specifically in science.

PhD is the degree you usually get at that level for English, Classics, Economics, Histrory etc..

Some Universities use DPhil (Oxford) for all these but I know of no other degree at that level except for those two (MD is effectively lower and DSc is usually some form of honourary degree and I am not certain what LLD is)

Because my post was wordy enough as it was and the OP was asking about a physics degree. I was going to be more specific, but it was late, I was tiered and.... meh

MIT seems to offer an ScD as an alternative to the PhD in some fields.

https://oge.mit.edu/graduate-admissions/programs/doctoral-de...

Historically a Masters degree was a license to teach, hence its name.

Apparently it is also a license for your brother in law to brag about having a PhD in economics, despite not being able to hold a job for more than 2 years and currently working as a manager at a pest control company after being laid off from his last job.

I can imagine that many great academics might have difficulties 'holding a job'. A PhD is certainly something to be proud of, just as running a marathon, raising a great child or having a great corporate career.

This is hilarious. Whereas I have to say, when holding a job means doing what other people want you to do, well, which person of high intelligence would be interested in that?

Physics was also philosophy for eons in that theories were on par with hard knowledge about the gods and mermaids.

Most early physic had surprisingly little explanatory or experimental connection to the actual physical world.

But it often made up for that with a solid grounding in popular mythology and the produce of some extraordinary imaginations.

You know, like philosophy!

Thats a gross mischaracterization of the ancients.

Anyway, those crazies came up with atomistic theory to explain silly myths.... and ended up explaining phase change as an emergent phenomenon.

You are overlooking a lot. Then and today.

The ancients were not just the famous Greek, Roman, Babylonian, Indian and Chinese philosophers, who made progress in reasoning.

Human's across every culture have spun creative explanations for natural phenomena, going back as far as we have any records.

- Why does it rain? How can we make it rain?

- What are the planets? What do their cycles and alignments mean?

- What is an illness? How do we avoid it? Cure it?

Even those philosophers were not immune to this kind of thinking.

Non/Pre-scientific answers to unanswerable questions gave satisfied people’s need for order and gave them hope.

Today, many people still take such answers seriously where there is no science (afterlife, cosmic justice, ...), and even where there is (astrology, crystals, etc.)

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