LSE Research: Science and Philosophy of Science

Physicist Richard Feynman is said to remarked that Philosophers of science are about as useful to scientists as ornithologists are to birds. Senior lecturer in philosophy, Roman Frigg, gives his riposte in this short film...


Scientists produce the technologies that characterise modern life and their theories help us to understand how the world works they are transparently useful. But why do we need philosophers of science?

In this short film Dr Roman Frigg, a former theoretical physicist who is now senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, argues that all science is the result of a particular philosophical attitude. One of the tasks of philosophers of science is to analyse science in light of these attitudes.

Philosophers can also feed back into science and Dr Frigg points to a project at LSE which looks at climate models as a good example of this. Climate scientists and philosophers are working together to tackle difficult conceptual problems such as the use of probability and the kind of forecasts you make to come up with more informed climate models.

[Overonator]

One way to ease the divide is if scientists and philosophers didn't compete for limited funds at universities.

[RalphBrooker-gniv]

One of the key areas of important interdependence between science and philosophy concerns the so-called special sciences, including and especially computing and cognitive sciences. But at the fundamental level of physics it remains a philosophical question when physical theories are, eg, explanatory rather than descriptive. Empiricist philosophers of science (from Duhem to van Fraassen) have traditionally denied scientific theory an explanatory role.

[MrPhotographerDude]

@Everett345 Who cares? The end result of the research is what matters.

[seifnotsorry]

That view is in itself mindless philosophical dogmatism. Therefore, your point is self-contradictory.