Why Bother With Philosophy of Science?! | On Theory & Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith
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- Опубликовано: 18 апр 2024
- My review of Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith, in which I also give an overview of Philosophy of Science and why it seemingly matters.
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Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith: amzn.to/4cTl7O1
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Fantastic video, as always. Your explanation of the problems of induction and competing paradigms made me think of Foucault’s notion of ‘episteme’: that the contingency of human progress extends all the way into the thinkable. Literally what we are capable of formulating and defining is overdetermined by so many historical, cultural, epochal, biological etc factors. And that only through the sweep of paradigms do new realms of knowledge enter common understanding. For example, Newtonian physics seemed irrefutable until the brilliance of Einstein completely shifted our understanding of space-time. Anyway, thought-provoking video as always! Keep up the excellent work.
You bring up a great point! Once something is 'good enough' we cling to it, and then it requires others-perhaps deviant, mischievous, clever, and unorthodox others-who shake us out of our equilibrium into recognizing something we have been ignoring. That's the beauty and worth of difference: it allows for enough deviation that we can discover something new.
Kuhn's insight into paradigm change can appear to be about what's fashionable but it's more useful to think about one framework of understanding some phenomena taking into account and explaining more than another framework currently being used. Over time there is a dynamic of "transcend and include" where later frameworks are able to take into account earlier framework's understandings. Check out Ken Wilbur's concept of holarchy. It applies usefully to Kuhn's ideas about paradigm shift. There's also a brilliant little book that predates Kuhn called "Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact" by Ludwik Fleck. It's fascinating and discusses "thought collectives." Great job on your video!
I greatly appreciate these insights and recommendations! I plan to continue reading from and about Kuhn, as he's a majorly influential figure (purchased The Structure of Scientific Revolutions not too long ago). I'll be looking into Fleck and Wilbur's work, too. I try my best not to give up on a thinker just because my first impression is negative. That would seem to me too reliant on the luck of however I was introduced to them. The general notion of a paradigm shift seems essentially valuable as a description; I think my aversion has been to my grasp of Kuhn's specific characterization of it thus far. Once again, thanks for being so helpful and informative in your comment!
Really enjoyed this video, great discussion on an important topic. I've read Godfrey-Smith's Metazoa and Other Minds. I'll have to pick this one up now as well. Thanks!
I'm in the opposite position: eager to read Metazoa and Other Minds after this slim volume of his. He balances clarity with personal insight throughout the book I review here, so I look forward to seeing how a more directly persuasive work of his reads.
I love watching your stuff, so thanks for stopping by!
Once again, you've taken a potentially boring topic and made it interesting enough for me to sit through. Keep going.
Thank you! I worry upon finishing that I didn't make the topic inviting enough, but I appreciate comments like yours. Helps me relax a bit.
Soldier on!
Good overview - I'll have to see if our bookstore has a copy (the Philosophy of Science & Technology is right across from our POS, so I see the collection every week). And I note you have The Dance To The Music of Time right behind your head - one of our regulars picked up the last half this week, but I've never been able to get beyond the third volume).
That's so awesome you work at a bookstore! One thing that's immensely helpful about the book I covered is the author offers Further Reading for every chapter, so if any one thinker or concept intrigues you, you'll have plenty to follow-up on later. It's overall a slim overview, so the extra reading material is essential and much-appreciated.
Wishlisted! This looks like a nice complement to the other books I've been picking up about the philosophy of science.
It has an excellent array of further reading included at the end of each chapter. So expect yourself to tunnel deep within the realm of philosophy of science for a long, long while afterward.
Engaging video! Thanks! On the discussion of Popper's appeal to falsifiability you noted that "if we cannot measure it then there is no way to falsify it." This relationship between numeracy and correctness reminds me of Poovey's "History of the Modern Fact," which argues that the application of numbers to the observed phenomena of social experience is an historical product.16th century double account books and useful public enumeration (maps, taxes, census, etc.) were presented as, in part, solutions to the "problem of induction." These set the groundwork for institutionalized statistics and, later, Popper's own intellectual baggage.
This is fascinating. Thank you so much for sharing! Poovey's book reminds me of Objectivity by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison, which similarly breaks down the history of objectivity, or the notion of properly measuring and capturing something certain in the world. There are countless decisions in the very act of measuring, and so a certain degree of arbitrariness or subjectivity seems unavoidable. This is a subject I expect to ponder and read more about for many years to come.
@@ToReadersItMayConcern I'll check the book out. And me too! I find that scientists recoil when I, a non-scientist, exclaim that objectivity is rooted in methodological hegemony. The fruitful task of accepting the necessity of arbitrary leaps and focusing instead on how to build meaningful consensus for such leaps is thus ignored. It is not helpful to deny them. Thanks again for the time you put into your channel.
Thank you for this informative (and somewhat entertaining) introduction and overview to the Philosophy of Science. It did what it’s supposed to do… got me looking further.
After reading a few Amazon reviews I decided to begin with Philosophy of Science: a Beginner’s Guide to see if I can in fact gear up for this Theory and Reality. Love what you bring to BookTube! 🥸
That book looks like it dives into some of the real-world consequences of certain views of science. Fascinating!
Awesome work, man. Keep it up!🔥
I very much appreciate your support! Thank you!
Thanks!
Oh, you're so great! Thank you!
Brilliant insights.
You're so kind. Thank you!
Nice. I enjoyed the critical analysis . I also like how the book honestly explains how science isn't immune from social and philosophic trends and such. Sounds like a good book to familiarize oneself with something that's so dominant in our culture.
The book is a really, really nice introduction. And it thankfully offers lists of many additional works to read afterward as well.
Your channel is really cool man !!
Thank you! You're really cool for saying so!
Another fantastic and informative video
Glad you enjoyed it
Good subject. Thank you.
Glad you enjoyed it!
As you probably know I am keeping some time away from BookTube, but I could not not watch this. The scientific method cannot be argued for throughout the scientific method, it has to rely in non scientific reasoning in order to justify itself. A great explanation, I’m glad to see you’re still making videos!
It's great to see you pop up! I hope the break has been serving you well!
Yes, science does not stand by itself alone. It is an elaborate project we've embarked upon. It could very well be among the best tools we've created, but it's important to recognize that it is a tool, one that can evolve in time, and we have responsibility in its form and use. What I appreciate about philosophy of science is that it serves as a reminder of how much our intuitions come into play during the act of science, and those intuitions carry much baggage, good and bad.
@@ToReadersItMayConcern Thank you, I couldn’t have said it better!
Another great vid!
Appreciate that!
Thank you for this great video. I belive Philosophy of science is a must read for scientists in general, it opens up a whole new window on how scientific theories are deduced and how to be critical of such theories as well. I'm a physicist myself and I have been interested in the philosphy of physics for a while. Currently I'm reading "Philosophy of Physics: Quantum Theory" by Tim Maudlin. Very interesting book but if you did not study Quantum Mechanics from academic books you will struggle to understand this book.
One interesting aspect in philosophy of physics is the topic of Reductionism vs Emergence. In simple words reductionism claims that everything can be explained by atoms and their interactions. Emergance is contradicting this claim by stating that the universe can evolve new laws not predictable by using only atoms. it was shocking to me to know that there are a phenomenon in physics that we studied and believed to be an existing aspect of a physical system but only to find out that the majority of scientists view such a phenomenon as emergent, meaning it's just a mathematical term made up to simplfy a model in physics. of course I only realised this by reading philosophy of physics papers.
Yes, I wholeheartedly agree! It's vital to grasp what it is you're even doing in science; otherwise you could stumble along mistakes already illuminated by thinkers of the past. Though, at bottom, we have to follow practical considerations for the sake of investigation (some philosophies can wind so tightly that they trap themselves into an inert position).
Do you read any Oxford Handbooks, by chance? I highly recommend the Oxford Handbook on Philosophy of Science. It's more for academics than the general public, but you seem more than equipped to handle it. And I think the layers of detail and complex considerations will serve you well. It also may be worth looking into philosophy of language, if only to help unwind some of the tighter knots of disagreement; when you spend enough time with philosophy of language, it can help you notice the differences in translation or description that seemingly occur ceaselessly with words, the ways in which key disagreements can fall onto matters of how something is described more than how something is (for instance, I could fixate on the notion of a "nation" as either being the culmination of the people within it or a higher layer concept of historically-bound land, and yet in my USE of that word I end up referring to much the same thing in either case, so it becomes about the use that matters more than my perceived definition of the term; this is complex, so I'll have to do a video on it someday; I find it to be a ubiquitous problem).
Great video. I watched the whole thing. I hadn’t connected induction with empiricism before. Karl Popper seems like someone worth reading more of!
Oh, I think you'll get a ton out of Karl Popper's work! I highly recommend his work The Open Society and Its Enemies, which is where I started with him; though the book Conjectures and Refutations may be a more straightforward summation and introduction (Open Society is a dense read that focuses at length on the minutiae of refuting Plato, Hegel, and Marx, but in the process of that lengthy refutation it builds to remarkable points about scientific development and society generally).
have you read nietzsche’s discussion of science in part 3 of genealogy of morals? it’s great
I read Genealogy of Morals back in college, so I must have, but it seems to me I should go back and reread as I'm not recalling the specifics. Thanks for pointing me back to that section! Rereading seems to me always better than the first time around!
[Edit]: I look back now and am immediately reminded of Nietzsche's flow-He has such a smooth flow in his writing! I think I might do a video on Reading Philosophy for Beauty. If you happen to think of any other writers whose style works in tandem with their ideas, let me know! (In many ways this is an excuse to reread great writers.)
Schopenhauer
@@ToReadersItMayConcern I really like Deleuze’s style - definitely matches his philosophy, but it’s quite inscrutable sometimes
Please provide the book title and author here. Flashing the book in your video is frustrating to me when I need it written down here.
The book title and author are in the description, including a link to its Amazon page. It is Theory and Reality by Peter Godfrey-Smith.
What. How? What. How? What. How? What as premise.
You don't seem to be doing much thinking if you can't use those words.
I find it convenient to divide truth into absolute and ampliative. Hmm. Maybe that's absolute, ampliative and pragmatic. Lee's Elucidation strikes again. 'A finite number of words must be made to represent an infinite number of things and possibilities. '
What does 'All swans are white' mean as an ampliative truth? As an absolute truth? As a practical truth? Maybe 'truth' here should be 'proposition'.
So what is this chicken supposed to do with this knowledge, absolute knowledge, that one Saturday the farmer is going to cut his head off? Now that is kind of a fairy tale, an analogy--lesson for us humans. What exactly is the lesson supposed to be? No. For me the argument comes from a place of nihilistic cynical pretend wisdom.