The last few years have seen a number of prominent scientists step up to microphones and belittle the value of philosophy. Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson are well-known examples. To redress the balance a bit, philosopher of physics Wayne Myrvold has asked some physicists to explain why talking to philosophers has actually been useful to them. I was one of the respondents, and you can read my entry at the Rotman Institute blog. I was going to cross-post my response here, but instead let me try to say the same thing in different words.
Roughly speaking, physicists tend to have three different kinds of lazy critiques of philosophy: one that is totally dopey, one that is frustratingly annoying, and one that is deeply depressing.
- “Philosophy tries to understand the universe by pure thought, without collecting experimental data.”
This is the totally dopey criticism. Yes, most philosophers do not actually go out and collect data (although there are exceptions). But it makes no sense to jump right from there to the accusation that philosophy completely ignores the empirical information we have collected about the world. When science (or common-sense observation) reveals something interesting and important about the world, philosophers obviously take it into account. (Aside: of course there are bad philosophers, who do all sorts of stupid things, just as there are bad practitioners of every field. Let’s concentrate on the good ones, of whom there are plenty.)
Philosophers do, indeed, tend to think a lot. This is not a bad thing. All of scientific practice involves some degree of “pure thought.” Philosophers are, by their nature, more interested in foundational questions where the latest wrinkle in the data is of less importance than it would be to a model-building phenomenologist. But at its best, the practice of philosophy of physics is continuous with the practice of physics itself. Many of the best philosophers of physics were trained as physicists, and eventually realized that the problems they cared most about weren’t valued in physics departments, so they switched to philosophy. But those problems — the basic nature of the ultimate architecture of reality at its deepest levels — are just physics problems, really. And some amount of rigorous thought is necessary to make any progress on them. Shutting up and calculating isn’t good enough.
- “Philosophy is completely useless to the everyday job of a working physicist.”
Now we have the frustratingly annoying critique. Because: duh. If your criterion for “being interesting or important” comes down to “is useful to me in my work,” you’re going to be leading a fairly intellectually impoverished existence. Nobody denies that the vast majority of physics gets by perfectly well without any input from philosophy at all. (“We need to calculate this loop integral! Quick, get me a philosopher!”) But it also gets by without input from biology, and history, and literature. Philosophy is interesting because of its intrinsic interest, not because it’s a handmaiden to physics. I think that philosophers themselves sometimes get too defensive about this, trying to come up with reasons why philosophy is useful to physics. Who cares?
Nevertheless, there are some physics questions where philosophical input actually is useful. Foundational questions, such as the quantum measurement problem, the arrow of time, the nature of probability, and so on. Again, a huge majority of working physicists don’t ever worry about these problems. But some of us do! And frankly, if more physicists who wrote in these areas would make the effort to talk to philosophers, they would save themselves from making a lot of simple mistakes.
- “Philosophers care too much about deep-sounding meta-questions, instead of sticking to what can be observed and calculated.”
Finally, the deeply depressing critique. Here we see the unfortunate consequence of a lifetime spent in an academic/educational system that is focused on taking ambitious dreams and crushing them into easily-quantified units of productive work. The idea is apparently that developing a new technique for calculating a certain wave function is an honorable enterprise worthy of support, while trying to understand what wave functions actually are and how they capture reality is a boring waste of time. I suspect that a substantial majority of physicists who use quantum mechanics in their everyday work are uninterested in or downright hostile to attempts to understand the quantum measurement problem.
This makes me sad. I don’t know about all those other folks, but personally I did not fall in love with science as a kid because I was swept up in the romance of finding slightly more efficient calculational techniques. Don’t get me wrong — finding more efficient calculational techniques is crucially important, and I cheerfully do it myself when I think I might have something to contribute. But it’s not the point — it’s a step along the way to the point.
The point, I take it, is to understand how nature works. Part of that is knowing how to do calculations, but another part is asking deep questions about what it all means. That’s what got me interested in science, anyway. And part of that task is understanding the foundational aspects of our physical picture of the world, digging deeply into issues that go well beyond merely being able to calculate things. It’s a shame that so many physicists don’t see how good philosophy of science can contribute to this quest. The universe is much bigger than we are and stranger than we tend to imagine, and I for one welcome all the help we can get in trying to figure it out.
Sean, you should know better than this. It is a poorly written article.
Are you stating that, as a scientist, all you do is computation and defining new techniques; that you never actually do rigorous thought? Every scientist I know, including myself, does deep thought experiments very often. Everything you said that a philosopher adds value here are things that scientists actually do, particularly theoretical physicists.
It seems to me you’ve also mistaken what the criticisms actually are. If you listen to them, particularly when the very people you refer to clarify what they mean, they are claiming that the field of philosophy has not generated any new discoveries. Can you give a practical example, in the last 100 years or so, of some new discovery or understanding of the nature of our universe generated by philosophers? If not, then you are agreeing with these critics. Sure, you might suggest that philosophers have added value in some other area, but then the critics never said they didn’t. (Are you sure you’re not committing a strawman argument here?)
You seem to be repeating the mistakes you made before regarding this topic, particularly with respect to David Albert’s poor criticism of Krauss.
Sad, not a single cite or quote of a prominent popular physicist (or any physicist) deliberately belittling philosophy, and yet the entire post is a counter-argument.
The auto redirect to some sponsor’s site is incredibly frustrating. I was going to read your article until I was rudely redirected. When I clicked back to return to your page, every 10 seconds it redirected to an invalid page. I know you need sponsors but no one will come to the site if it behaves like that.
Arrgh. Two points:
1. PhD = Doctor of Philosophy. Deal with it. Be philosophical about it.
2. Philosophy often isn’t so much about what to think, or what to think about, but *how*to think, and *how* to think about things, especially as they relate to other things.
My favorite philosophers make what I call “neutral arguments”: They advocate for a position while simultaneously doing their best to negate it or dilute its context or relevance. I have to work hard just to agree with them!
My favorite result from reading the works of philosophers (no mater if they call themselves one or not) is that I gain perspective, often multiple perspectives, that lubricate my own thoughts in my own work.
There is one task in science that seems to breed philosophers: Writing a truly great survey paper. I have a collection of favorite survey papers, each a masterful colloquium that ranges from “just the facts” (which is where ordinary survey papers stop) to a summary and critique of the methodologies involved (both experimental and analytical, which is where the better survey papers stop), to bridging and sometimes unifying the interconnected conceptual heights (where the insightful philosophers stop).
There is a better criticism to the modern philosophy of science: it’s useless (or at best outdated) because of the very fact that modern science exists. Physics was once called natural philosophy because it is a way of thinking about the natural world. It evolved and it uses math as its basic grammar, but physics is no less a field of philosophy than it once was. It still is philosophy, but a very well polished one, and the natural way to think about natural phenomena. Old-fashioned “philosophy of science” is just that: an old fashioned field that uses inappropriate grammar to describe natural phenomena. They can’t go much further than their ancestors did centuries ago.
Biggest problem with philosophy is that its nature depend upon the half emotional, half logical stands or biasness of receiver. For example, one who believes in some sort of supreme power and all will tend to interpret quantum mechanics with consciousness and other metaphysical ideas. Beauty of science is nothing but the non subjective nature of it.
Most of my experiences with philosophers have been negative. Bill Buckley on “Firing Line” once interviewed (approvingly) a “famous philospher” (whose name I did not know then and have forgotten now) who had written a book proving that monotheism was correct. Another one speculated on a PBS show that the Sun might have a consciousness. Then there’s Elliot Sober and his “design argument”, and Alvin Plantinga who thinks that naturalism is a “complete mistake”. (I don’t think either of these was the one I saw on “Firing Line”, who was an old man in the 1970’s.)
One difference between science and philosophy which such examples illustrate to me is that in philosophy there does not seem to be any way to get rid of bad ideas, since there is always some set of unprovable (or disprovable) assumptions which could justify them (e.g., Bishop Berkeley’s immaterialism). It seems to me that science evolved from philosophy as a way of deciding between competing ideas, by the preponderance of evidence.
Long ago I was told this story, which may or may not be true: one of the questions on the final exam for a philosophy course was “Why?” One student gave the correct answer and got an A: “Because.” (I might have tried “Why not?”)
I was greatly disappointed when I read Hawkins statement regarding the death of Philosophy, but it is indicative of the age we live in, where Science is taken from being an important method of explaining how and has been transferred into the popular psyche as a new religion. The likes of Dawkins is just as bad, his attempts at Theology are embarrassing and illustrate the fact that while they have the right to an opinion just because they are well known doesn’t mean what they say is either right, or warrants being in the public domain.
As a Theologian / Philosophy student I would never even try to comment on particle, or any other type of physics as it is a topic well beyond my understanding, I only wish that they would have the honesty to also say that this is something that they, evidently don’t understand, and keep their opinion to themselves! Hear endith my rant!
We human beings are classical objects. Therefore our languages (not regarding mathematics as a kind of language) are classical. Experimental physicists have to do experiments with classical objects. At some point everyone has a question about meaning of the equations of modern physics. So whether theoretical physicists like it or not, philosophy at some level is always a necessary part of the description of the universe.
Some of the physicists I know hate philosopher because (1) every second person can try to pretend to be a philosopher (2) philosophical thoughts cannot objectively evaluated
I think this post puts a line in the sand but it does not do much to provide support to the argument. I think more examples would be worthwhile. All in all this seems to come down to the old question… should we be teaching the liberal arts at all? Should a student blow tens of thousands of dollars on a degree in English? This question becomes more important as the price of education becomes more expensive and potential gainful employment seems to require students to become specialized in a very narrow selection of fields. Hey I graduated from Art school and I think I learned some very fundamental lessons… did it prepare me for the job market? Not at all. There was a ROI but it is abstract.
I say let them have at it. It’s maybe worth pondering for a moment why this collision between physics and philosophy is happening right now. There doesn’t seem to be a similar fight with chemists; and the biologists are fighting the religious nuts, not the philosophers. Why physics?
I think there are two reasons:
1) Physics is now claiming to be getting pretty close to explaining all fundamental stuff. That’s a real threat to philosophy, which previously had a monopoly on that sort of thing. (The one place we do see philosophers fighting with biologists is in neuroscience, where a similar thing is happening.)
2) Physics has big meaning-shaped holes at the edge of it, which philosophy is just itching to fill in. Philosophers would love to think that they can contribute to the interpretation of quantum mechanics (we do interpretation all day! you don’t have to do maths to interpret!), so they step into the fray, sometimes a little uncautiously.
I actually disagree with Prof Carroll’s “let’s all be friends” approach. I think there are real conflicts here, and the abuse (from both sides) helps us to trace the faultlines between the different modes of enquiry. I’m more for taking the Godzilla approach: “Let them fight.” These vigorous debates have sparked a lot of good discussion, at least on the philosophy side. I’m not competent to know if the physics arguments that have followed have been enlightening, but I have seen physicists at least seeming to engage fruitfully with the questions.
The criticism of philosophy as useless in daily life is valid as it pertains to non-Objectivist philosophy. The fact that Objectivist philosophy is relevant to living is an example of either a lack of knowledge of Objectivism or of a misunderstanding of it. Many philosophies do not define their terms (morality, value, reality, etc.) and do not build an integrated hierarchical structure which allows for clarity of thinking and action. Any philosophy which is not a guide to thinking and efficacious action is less than useless.
Thanks for posting this! I graduated with a degree in philosophy a while back and am always saddened and annoyed when scientists (or anyone from another discipline, really) attacks philosophy, especially for being useless. Especially when it’s clear, from their arguments against it, that they have not studied it (at least not in depth, and not with an open mind). Especially when I know it has taught me so much about reasoning, how to frame and evaluate an argument, and how to get to the real heart of any particular problem quickly. I always find it very difficult, though, to express how useful and important it is — especially to people who know nothing about it. So again, thanks!
Good thoughts.
Philosophy:
— the study of the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline.
— the study of the theoretical basis of a particular branch of knowledge or experience.
Philosophies in physics involve perspectives concerning the meanings of words and their organization to describe nature. Many theorists, physicists, astronomers, etc do not realize that theories have within them perspectives of reality that are separate from the facts and interpretations of observations. The meanings of the words such as time, space, matter, energy, for instance, involve philosophical concepts and interpretations.
In my opinion if someone denigrates philosophy it simply means they don’t understand or realize how different philosophies involving different perspectives of the same thing can result in different understandings of reality, even if the facts remain the same.
I’m glad Sean has exposed the related misunderstandings and ignorance of many physicists, astronomers, and theorists, concerning philosophy.
Bravo, Sean, as a physicist who has spent much time reading (and studying) philosophy, I am very frustrated by physicists—even very good ones—who fail to see, often with a brutish arrogance, the great value of much philosophy. My thoughts on this very much agree with yours.
Alexandra Carbone wrote, “[philosophy] has taught me so much about reasoning, how to frame and evaluate an argument, and how to get to the real heart of any particular problem quickly.” And these certainly seem like beneficial activities that could fall in the realm of philosophy.
But must the scientific method be called a philosophy? Can’t we say we figured out from trial, error, and observation that it’s what works best? And it would work independently of whether or not anyone’s philosophy says it would work.
And if philosophy and science might pose the same question about the nature of the universe, isn’t it only science that can actually answer it (if it is answerable)? And if that’s the case, then what extra does philosophy bring to the table?
For the pro-philosophical-science side to convince the philosophy-adds-nothing-to-science side, we would need an example of science that could not be done without philosophy. And hopefully the definition of philosophy would not be made to be overly broad (enveloping areas that could just as legitimately be called science) in order to accomplish this.
“Philosophy is completely useless to the everyday job of a working physicist.”
I’d take that a step further and argue that philosophy actually harms the ability to do physics.
Any science, is about making models to predict behavior. Physics is a particularly hard science so it usually makes very precise and specific models. All that matters for this is what the observations say, and what math can be easily solved. Any question of why things happen is irrelevant (unless it can be used to make a better predictive model) , and anything based on a priori knowledge is antithetical to this approach.
Albert Einstein wandered into philosophy when he argued “God does not play dice with the universe”. Unfortunately quantum mechanics is right and Einstein wasted a number of years objecting to reality. By “right” I mean it’s an excellent predictive model so it’s predictions are >99.999% accurate. There are actually other models that are just as good, but they involve faster than light communication and time travel rather than random behavior (things that Einstein also had philosophical objections to, and which make the math more difficult to solve).
Maybe philosophers should stop saying silly things about physics.
Nice one Sean.
However, what do you say about philosophy of Religion? As a subject it totally annoyed me. A bit like Deepak Chopra…
Very well written, thank you Sean.
First of all, it seems funny that many people do not realize the origin of science; Science came from philosophy. Essentially, it is a branch of philosophy, the empirical, applied branch of it.
For hundreds of years, philosophy and science were almost indistinguishable. When Democritus thought of the “Atom”, he didn’t have experimental data; he used a logical argument. The two disciplines only recently grew apart. When industrialism exploded, science become far more focused on being “productive” and scientists were pushed away from the philosophical implications of science during their education. Philosophers, on the other hand, set out on wilder and wilder paths of thinking that actually ignored scientific facts. Just look at the example of postmodernism, probably the most ridiculous “philosophy” that has ever existed, essentially negating itself, by attempting to negate logic. Thus scientists started dismissing philosophy and philosophers started dismissing science. Both sides had valid points, both sides made mistakes.
The result is that the stereotype of a scientist is that they’re robots only interested in getting things done, while the stereotype of a philosopher is that they sit around doing nothing other than indulging themselves in wild speculation.
Needless to say, it doesn’t have to be this way. Philosophy and science go hand in hand. A scientist needs to understand basic philosophy and a philosopher needs to understand basic science. Where the relationship is uneven, though, is that philosophical ideas that come in opposition to scientific facts have to accept defeat.
On June 23, 2014 at 7:59 pm, JAYANTI PRASAD said:
“Some of the physicists I know hate philosopher because (1) every second person can try to pretend to be a philosopher (2) philosophical thoughts cannot objectively evaluated”
It seems to me that some of the physicists you know must be very irrational. Why would one hate philosophers because one meets a lot of people who ‘pretend’ to be philosophers (and who therefore aren’t philosophers)?
Also, what makes you think that philosophical thoughts cannot be objectively evaluated? I can ‘objectively’ determine how often one person’s expression of a particular idea (thought) is repeated by others and compare that with results for other thoughts. That may not be an evaluation of the truth of any propositions expressed within the thoughts, but it is an evaluation of the thoughts themselves.
The first criticism is bunk because it could be describing mathematics. The second is not a criticism at all. The third is the only one with some merit.
I enjoy reading philosophy and thinking about the questions it raises. So yes, it has value to me. But so does pure fiction. If a novelist or poet said “The guys at CERN should pay more attention to us, and waste a little less money on their cold emotionless hadrons!” we’d probably think it absurd. But there are philosophers who do say such things and are feted as great thinkers (at least by some other philosophers).
So I wonder if the sniping from physicists is not so much an unprovoked attack, more a response to a demanding neighbour. Working physicists and mathematicians have all experienced the “letter from a crank”, a retired engineer who thinks he (invariably male) has squared the circle, “disproven Einstein”, etc. Interjections from philosophers must often have the same flavour as such letters. Hence the contemptuous tone of the dismissal.
I agree with Sean. I want to add one more aspect about Philosophy of Science. Philosophy tries to figure out the nature of scientific inventions by the very concepts of paradigm shift, likewise features. For instance, the Copernican revolution which was later far developed by Newton. Finding out such features about scientific discoveries and/or inventions is significant which we can’t shun to have more insightful understanding of nature.
Have to agree with the general point of the article. If people actually read what von Neumann was saying, axiomatic systems must ultimately really on some level of subjectivity. The point being we know that there are certain things we know are true even if they are not provable in the set of axioms. The idea of an axiom is purely rooted in philosophy, so our axiomatic approach to many physics theory are very closely tied to our philosophical prejudices. The point is that with a very small set of axioms, the world can be explained with quantum mechanics. The scientific part comes in when we try to test the strength of the axiomatic statements. To date there is no experimental evidence to show the axioms are wrong, that is why the theory is so powerful.