Scientists vs Philosophers

Philosopher of physics David Z. Albert and philosopher and writer Jim Holt discuss the tension between scientists and philosophers.

An excerpt from "The Origins of the Universe: Why Is There Something Rather than Nothing?" featuring Steve Paulson, Neil Turok, Jim Holt, and David Albert.

The New York Academy of Sciences
Tuesday, October 14, 2014

[urvashikulshreshtha]

It should never be physics vs philosophy.
For us to understand the world, they must be on the same side.
I do not respect them division between the disciplines.
People have a very poor immature idea of what philosophy is, a caricature of the subject.

[PelycheeaceRA]

philosophy: "where should i go?"
science: "how do i get there?"
you need both answers.

[honoraryanglo]

Without philosophy we would not have science, civil society, morality, etc. philosophy is the groundwork of science, it asks the questions and science answers them

[alexxander]

"Every word is a prejudice" - Neitzsche

[IshaaqNewton]

Before doing Science, you have to have many presuppositions.
But before doing Philosophy, you have to have one presupposition only. That is: "I need to know the truth."

[nickspitzer]

Silly rabbits to argue against the value of philosophy or of science over philosophy just is to do philosophy. So to argue against philosophy is self referentially incoherent. If the statement is true it makes itself false. Philosophy and science need each other. A philosopher who is not at least well read in the sciences and not conversant with the deliverances of the sciences is that much less of a philosopher by making a claim to contribute something about any traditional field in philosophy like logic, ethics, metaphysics or epistemology. These all require at least some understanding of the major concepts delivered by one of humanities best tools for understanding this phenomena we bump up against as conscious beings.. In addition, a physicist is that much less of a physicist who is not trained in logic/critical thinking, basic ontological reasoning such as the nature and existence of abstract objects like mathematical properties and its bearing on the sciences. Issues in philosophy of science such as; the ethics of research, theory confirmation and the epistemology of science. All of these are the primary domain of philosophy. So lets all have some humility and learn how each discipline might help the other out.

[faktumstreambeatz]

Platos "The Republic" was philosophy.
Guess what rules our whole world now?

[DustinMillerPolyInnovator]

Why is there even a tension in the first place?? You realize that philosophy and science are two of the most important "creations" by humanity we have ever managed to stop squabbling about to create. They have unfathomable parallels of a deeply profound nature. Between the unprecedented defining aspect of the special relativity theory, to the revelations of the human condition of Stoicism. They both have the integral importance, and without either we would be lost. Conversely with BOTH we have a completely new way of looking at life and the universe at different levels.

Philosophy is just the "WHY" of science, and science is the "HOW" of philosophy. It is human nature to define "WHAT".

[nickolasgaspar]

BTW, the title is wrong. It should be "Physics and Philosophers" on cosmological questions.

[KevTheImpaler]

Scientists and social scientists can be pretty withering about each other.

I have often thought some of physics discoveries through thought experiment were rather philosophical, such as Carnot's perfect heat engine. Einstein hardly did any experiments. Concepts such as entropy seem very philosophical to me. It was discovered by very clever people thinking about it very hard rather than by experiment. This all warps my brain, but there are parallels between entropy and information transfer over communication channels.

[mr.l]

I'm sorry as a curious person of philosophy and history buff. Philosophy as played a key role in our modern world. Without philosophy there would be no ethics, logic and epistemology. People would still be living in a world of mythological superstition, no sense of rationality and complete ingnorance. So to say that philosophy is dead, only an arrogant fool would make such a statement

[dehall]

Science can answer the functions of reality. But you truly can’t understand the where it came from.

[thenextshenanigantownandth]

This truly is a silly squabble, but for those in the physics community who claim philosophy is worthless as it doesn't measure anything, they're missing the point. Philosophy is the ability to think logically and abstractly about reality, it's an inherent thing built into us by nature her self. It's the only way we can make true sense of the world beyond measurement. On the other end we have philosophers who are claiming physicists are incompetent as it's not truly making sense of the world, merely reducing it to figures and numbers( quantifying it) without a care for the bigger picture. Both are wrong and right at the same time. I am more in the physics camp, but I do love philosophy and i suspect many of the greatest physicists did as well. I believe when we get to the highest level of physics it will become more about imagination, Than mathematics. Mind you we obviously haven't reached that level yet, but one day we will. So at that level we will be de-evoled back to the days of the ancient thinkers of old.
Anyway, At least one thing physics and philosophers can come together on is how useless Mathematicians are . :P

[DanZhukovin]

My amusement is that people once thought that philosophy would have the right tools to explain reality, and then their best answer was physics.

[twistedwithmelancholy]

Philosophy and science are best interlinked.

Philosophy takes up the position of devil's advocate to make science question itself, thereby creating better accuracy, solutions and engaging in paths of scientific research it would not have yet taken.

Just my opinion

[nitongpelingon]

those 3-physicists mentioned (Hawkings, Tyson and Krause) were all atheists or agnostics and were often debating against Christian apologists which are mostly Christian philosophers

[quantumgravity]

thats why i love Philosophy because it answers the 'Why' not the 'How'

[weirdomascot]

yes, i agree that every scientist is a philosopher (though he refuse), but every philosopher is not a scientist ( i mean scientist here as the public believes, the experimental ones, because when in rome, do as romans do). philosophy is a love, an addiction to ones interested field. so, human imagination begins where human understandings end! # hocus pocus and a little mumbo jumbo!

[triplejoker]

Science is dependent on philosophy. And it always aims at truth/ reality if it is relevant (true science). Even if it is going to focus on predictions we can say that they are only interesting if the predictions are close to the truth about what is going to happen in the real world (they somehow mach what we call reality). Measurement can include many things like sense perception and are therefore to broad to be the subject of science...even if measurement is central. One would have to explain what is meant by measurement.

[MelosGo]

Philosophy of science is important in the development of science. Most prominent scientists became philosopher of science and lead to its development. Science would not develop much without philosophy if science