The Line between Philosophy and Science

[Cyrus]

My god this post is filled with bad information. I will post a response when I get back in a few.

In fact, it completely deonstrates what I mean when I said: "Let the scientists do the science, please". And I'm going to scan a page from a book, not wikipedia, for you to read since you are so far off the mark.

 

[Pythagorean]

It depends what you mean by science... and although many sciency types would like to think otherwise philosophy is still very much the foundation of anything you might want to call science.

I think some 'scientists' are actually just technicians that are scientifically trained. They have no vision, but they can work well within a system defined by logical rules. Einstein has been brought up many times in this thread; he's a very extreme example of a philosophical scientist. In some cases, his philosophy even dissociated him with the direction of mainstream science, but this isn't philosophy's fault; it's Einstein's choice of philosophy that was challenged by quantum mechanics.

Couple that with the fact that the ancients were much more impressed with mathematics than with the physical world, and you ended up with theories like Plato's forms. Where mathematical ideas were thought to be the 'most real'.

This is a philosophy that still perplexes me. Of course, I see it represented by mathematicians more than physicists.

The idea that all knowledge could be derived from observation is empirical philosophy. Science is really just a narrow band of philosophy. And rationalism wasn't eliminated, but with science these days we tend to think in terms of theoretical and applied science. Which are essentially the rational and empirical ends of the spectrum.

Now I think this is where some conflict arises between philosophy and science. Science is made up of many more times experimenters than theoreticians. It seems reasonable to me that the more experimental types (as well as engineers) will have a completely different aspect of science than someone who is theoretical. I don't mean in terms of occupation necessarily, as I intend to be an experimentalist occupationally, and a theoretician on my own time, myself.

(I see you mentioned some of the above later in your post)

One might be tempted to limit good science to observation, but really, science also depends on theories, which are logical abstractions, and even inspiration...

I think a lot of that got into science were very dreamy about the theoretical aspects. We all want to discover or invent something... be the first person to some little part of reality, but many of us never will. A lot of us get bitter about that along the way and some even begin to cross their arms as if all of science had been discovered and it was just some details we were working out from now on.

 

[JoeDawg]

In fact, it completely deonstrates what I mean

This should be good.

 

[JoeDawg]

I think some 'scientists' are actually just technicians that are scientifically trained. They have no vision, but they can work well within a system defined by logical rules. Einstein has been brought up many times in this thread; he's a very extreme example of a philosophical scientist. In some cases, his philosophy even dissociated him with the direction of mainstream science, but this isn't philosophy's fault; it's Einstein's choice of philosophy that was challenged by quantum mechanics.

Thomas Kuhn made a similar observation about the way science works. He called the Einstein variety 'revolutionary science', a crisis happens and then a paradigm shift...
The other type of science, the everyday kind, was equivalent to puzzle-solving. Not very flattering.

This is a philosophy that still perplexes me. Of course, I see it represented by mathematicians more than physicists.

A while back there was a discussion topic that centered around the question of whether 'math is invented or discovered'.

I think this is essentially the chicken and egg problem.
For an empiricist, experiences happen, and we create abstract rules to describe our observations in a generalized way.
1+1=2 is only true, because we have observed it to be so, we 'invent' the math to describe the world.

From the rationalist perspective its reversed. A triangle always has 3 sides and specific angles, this is a universal property. This is seen as being somehow an inherent aspect of the universe. Mathematics then, is the language of the universe, the underlying structure we 'discover'.

I lean more to the empiricist notion, but I think its somewhat of a false problem.

Now I think this is where some conflict arises between philosophy and science. Science is made up of many more times experimenters than theoreticians.

I think one of the major problems in the world today is communication across specialization.
There is way too much knowledge in the world for anyone brain to handle. So we need specialists, but every specialist sees the world through their speciality. Plumbers see the world in terms of pipes and valves, biologists/doctors in terms of organs and tissue. And we all overapply our knowledge to areas outside our specialty, because we think of ourselves as intelligent and experts. So you'll often see philosophers dismissive of scientists and the reverse.

I once listened to an interview, where a literary theorist was being interviewed by a science journalist type. The theorist said 'science is a fiction'. It made me laugh and it made the interviewer cringe. The theorist wasn't of course saying that science was 'false', but rather that science was a way of looking at, or modeling, the world.
Different points of view can be both instructive and misleading.

 

[Hurkyl]

This is a philosophy that still perplexes me. Of course, I see it represented by mathematicians more than physicists.

I can see a path there that is (IMHO) similar to formalism, which basically boils down to saying that physics uses the same logic as every other discipline. In particular, the only thing different between a physicist saying "there exists" and a mathematician saying "there exists" is which subject they're talking about.

I could speculate that talk about what is "most real" is just describing how a mathematician exploring mathematical "reality" enjoys a higher signal-to-noise ratio than a physicist exploring physical "reality". Or maybe the tendency to organize information about physical "reality" in terms of 'abstract' concepts. (i.e. Forms)

And most (?) philosophical disagreement would boil down to a sematic argument about how to define the word 'real'.

 

[Pythagorean]

A while back there was a discussion topic that centered around the question of whether 'math is invented or discovered'.

[...]

I lean more to the empiricist notion, but I think its somewhat of a false problem.

yea, I was actually part of 2 of those threads here at PF. Me and CaptainQuasar hit the topic pretty hard, him taking the math discovered side, me taking the empiricist side. I eventually came to the conclusion that some aspects of math are discovered, others invented.

I think one of the major problems in the world today is communication across specialization.
There is way too much knowledge in the world for anyone brain to handle. So we need specialists, but every specialist sees the world through their speciality. Plumbers see the world in terms of pipes and valves, biologists/doctors in terms of organs and tissue. And we all overapply our knowledge to areas outside our specialty, because we think of ourselves as intelligent and experts. So you'll often see philosophers dismissive of scientists and the reverse.

Yeah, in physics, we tend to think we're the fundamental materialist (science and engineering) subject but it's interesting how useless our knowledge can be in many practical engineering applications. I've switched over to engineering for my master's program because I want more practical, hands-on knowledge, but I can still completely appreciate the philosophical approach of my undergraduate physics curriculum.

I once listened to an interview, where a literary theorist was being interviewed by a science journalist type. The theorist said 'science is a fiction'. It made me laugh and it made the interviewer cringe. The theorist wasn't of course saying that science was 'false', but rather that science was a way of looking at, or modeling, the world.
Different points of view can be both instructive and misleading.

Some of my physics professors pointed this concept out well; one was a particularly imaginative professor who liked to inspire us creatively. Very interesting character; he studies nonlinear dynamics (chaos theory) and dislikes quantum mechanics.

 

[Pythagorean]

I can see a path there that is (IMHO) similar to formalism, which basically boils down to saying that physics uses the same logic as every other discipline. In particular, the only thing different between a physicist saying "there exists" and a mathematician saying "there exists" is which subject they're talking about.

I could speculate that talk about what is "most real" is just describing how a mathematician exploring mathematical "reality" enjoys a higher signal-to-noise ratio than a physicist exploring physical "reality". Or maybe the tendency to organize information about physical "reality" in terms of 'abstract' concepts. (i.e. Forms)

And most (?) philosophical disagreement would boil down to a sematic argument about how to define the word 'real'.

This very much reminds me of the debate between CaptainQuasar and I in the thread(s) JoeDawg previously mentioned.

It's still difficult for me to see how mathematical principles are as real as the physical world that we observe and base them off of; but of course I'm trained as a physicist, not a mathematician.

 

[madness]

Cyrus - you seem to assume I'm a philosopher in your answers to my post, I'm a mathematical physicist. You didn't offer any reasons why what I said was wrong, you simply stated that it was. Do you think something is science if it is possible to verify it in principle or only when it has been verified? Any inferences made at all from scientific data require some underlying philosophical assumptions, and you have made no effort to refute this fact.

 

[gabrielh]

I'd like to think that science is a form of philosophy itself. Conceptualizing ideas and then testing them.