A Curious Little Blog

I stumbled onto a very interesting article about a scientist, Michela Massimi, who was making waves by promoting the idea that philosophy has an important role in science.  It seems fairly obvious to me, but I don't work in science so my perspective is very different.  Then again, I also felt that philosophy had an obvious role in history, and many historians don't.  It often seems that way as long as you're taking some of the fundamental things for granted, but the moment they become questioned, you need philosophy to help you out. The interesting thing is not just that Massimi defends philosophy, but that she takes a contrarian view that science is actually closely related to physical reality.  This probably seems to most people like a silly thing to debate, but it is a major issue in philosophy.  Do scientists describe what actually happens, or do they just give us a model that can account for what happens but bears no actual relation to what is going on?...

It was a treat finally to read Lucretius's masterpiece, "On the Nature of Things" ("De Rerum Natura").  I knew it was an exposition of atomism, but I didn't know what to expect in the way of reasoning behind or developement of the idea.  It is actually a poem, and, thanks to the excellent translation, the writing style makes it easier to understand rather than more difficult.  (I can't imagine trying to tackle it in Latin, however.)  It was written explicitly to argue against religion; right at the beginning, Lucretius makes clear that he thinks religion is nonsense and he is going to prove it by explaining physical phenomena without reference to the gods. The central argument of his explanation is that the world is composed of atoms, and he can use atoms to explain everything from a purely physical point of view.  It is truly extraordinary to see how far reason can work out things about the physical world even when observations are made at such a gros...

Thomas Kuhn objected to Popper's positivist approach to science. Although Popper set a high bar for what he regarded as "scientific," he nevertheless believed that humans can and do make steady progress in learning more about the world. Kuhn was more sceptical; he thought that the best we could do is come up with more and more sophisticated models of reality, without, however, approaching "truth" (knowledge of the Ding-an-sich , or what really lies behind our models). Kuhn's inspiration was what he called "the Copernican revolution." Prior to Copernicus, Western astronomers since Ptolemy had worked out a very detailed model of how the planets, sun, and stars revolve around the earth. To make their model match observations, they had to add layers of complexity: celestial bodies not only moved in great circular orbits, but also sometimes in smaller orbits around a point in their major orbit (see the explanation and diagram at Wikipedia ). Somet...

I've been listening to a lecture series on philosophy recently, and, even though I haven't gotten past the Greeks yet, it has reminded me of a number of issues that trouble me about science. I want to take the opportunity to express my concerns here. Along the way, I will probably oversimplify philosophy a great deal -- not on purpose, but rather because I have only a simplistic understanding of it. I welcome responses to clear up my misconceptions. One of my issues with science is the famous idea of Karl Popper that it can never establish positive claims, only falsify wrong ones. The history of this goes back to David Hume, the 18th century Scottish sceptic. He shook up the philosophical world by claiming that science could never prove anything through induction -- that is, drawing conclusions about physical laws based on observations. The classic illustration is the sun's rising. Even though the sun has risen every day for our whole lives, and for countless human l...