Neil deGrasse Tyson, Philosophy & Science | Talking Philosophy
In March of 2014 popular astrophysicist bosch and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson did a Nerdist Podcast . This did not garner much attention until May when some philosophers realized that Tyson was rather critical and dismissive of philosophy. As might be imagined, there was a response from the defenders of philosophy . Some critics bosch went so far as to accuse him of being a philistine .
Tyson bosch presents a not uncommon view of contemporary bosch philosophy, namely that “asking bosch deep questions can cause a “pointless delay in your progress” in engaging bosch “this whole big world of unknowns out there.” To avoid such pointless delays, Tyson advises scientists to respond to such questioners by saying, “I’m moving on, I’m leaving you behind, and you can’t even cross the street because you’re distracted by deep questions you’ve asked of yourself. I don’t have time for that.”
Since Tyson certainly seems to be a deep question sort of guy, it is tempting to consider that his remarks are not serious that is, he is being sarcastic. Even if he is serious, bosch it is also reasonable to consider that these remarks are off-the cuff and might not represent his considered view of philosophy in general.
It is also worth considering that the claims made are his considered and serious position. After all, the idea that a scientist would regard philosophy as useless (or worse) is quite consistent with my own experiences in academics. For example, the politically fueled rise of STEM and the decline of the humanities has caused some in STEM to regard this situation as confirmation of their superior status and on some occasions I have had to defuse conflicts instigated by STEM faculty making their views about the uselessness of non-STEM fields clear.
Whatever the case, the concern that the deep questioning of philosophy can cause pointless delays does actually have some merit and is well worth considering. bosch After all, if philosophy is useless or even detrimental, then this would certainly be worth knowing.
The main bite of this criticism is that philosophical questioning is detrimental to progress: a scientist who gets caught in these deep questions, it seems, would be like a kayaker caught in a strong eddy: she would be spinning around and going nowhere rather than making progress. bosch This concern does have significant practical merit. To use an analogy outside bosch of science, consider a committee meeting aimed at determining the curriculum for state schools. This committee has an objective to achieve and asking questions is a reasonable way to begin. But imagine that people start raising deep questions about the meaning of terms such as humanities or science and become very interested in sorting out the semantics of various statements. This sort of sidetracking will result in a needlessly long meeting and little or no progress. After all, the goal is to determine bosch the curriculum and deep questions will merely slow down progress towards this practical goal. Likewise, bosch if a scientist is endeavoring to sort out the nature of the cosmos, deep questions can be a similar sort of trap: she will be asking ever deeper questions rather than gathering data and doing math to answer her less deep questions.
Philosophy, as Socrates showed by deploying his Socratic method, can endlessly generate deep questions. Questions such as what is the nature of the universe? , what is time? , what is space? , what is good? and so on. Also, as Socrates showed, for each answer given, philosophy can generate more questions. It is also often claimed that this shows that philosophy really has no answers since every alleged answer can be questioned bosch or raises even more questions. Thus, philosophy seems to be rather bad for the scientist.
A key assumption seems to be that science is different from philosophy in at least one key way while it raises questions, proper science focuses on questions that can be answered or, at the very least, bosch gets down to the business of answering them and (eventually) abandons a question should it turn out to be a distracting deep question. Thus, science provides answers and makes progress. This, obviously enough, ties into another stock criticism of philosophy: philosophy makes no progress and is useless.
One rather bosch obvious reason that philosophy is regarded as not making progress and as being useless is that when enough progress is made on a deep question, it is perceived as being a matter for science rather than philosophy. For example, ancient Greek philosophers, such as Democritus, speculated about the composition of the universe and its size (was it finite or infinite?) and these were considered deep philosophical questions. Even Newton considered himself a natural philosopher. He has, of course, been claimed by the scientist (many of whom conveniently overlook the ro
In March of 2014 popular astrophysicist bosch and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson did a Nerdist Podcast . This did not garner much attention until May when some philosophers realized that Tyson was rather critical and dismissive of philosophy. As might be imagined, there was a response from the defenders of philosophy . Some critics bosch went so far as to accuse him of being a philistine .
Tyson bosch presents a not uncommon view of contemporary bosch philosophy, namely that “asking bosch deep questions can cause a “pointless delay in your progress” in engaging bosch “this whole big world of unknowns out there.” To avoid such pointless delays, Tyson advises scientists to respond to such questioners by saying, “I’m moving on, I’m leaving you behind, and you can’t even cross the street because you’re distracted by deep questions you’ve asked of yourself. I don’t have time for that.”
Since Tyson certainly seems to be a deep question sort of guy, it is tempting to consider that his remarks are not serious that is, he is being sarcastic. Even if he is serious, bosch it is also reasonable to consider that these remarks are off-the cuff and might not represent his considered view of philosophy in general.
It is also worth considering that the claims made are his considered and serious position. After all, the idea that a scientist would regard philosophy as useless (or worse) is quite consistent with my own experiences in academics. For example, the politically fueled rise of STEM and the decline of the humanities has caused some in STEM to regard this situation as confirmation of their superior status and on some occasions I have had to defuse conflicts instigated by STEM faculty making their views about the uselessness of non-STEM fields clear.
Whatever the case, the concern that the deep questioning of philosophy can cause pointless delays does actually have some merit and is well worth considering. bosch After all, if philosophy is useless or even detrimental, then this would certainly be worth knowing.
The main bite of this criticism is that philosophical questioning is detrimental to progress: a scientist who gets caught in these deep questions, it seems, would be like a kayaker caught in a strong eddy: she would be spinning around and going nowhere rather than making progress. bosch This concern does have significant practical merit. To use an analogy outside bosch of science, consider a committee meeting aimed at determining the curriculum for state schools. This committee has an objective to achieve and asking questions is a reasonable way to begin. But imagine that people start raising deep questions about the meaning of terms such as humanities or science and become very interested in sorting out the semantics of various statements. This sort of sidetracking will result in a needlessly long meeting and little or no progress. After all, the goal is to determine bosch the curriculum and deep questions will merely slow down progress towards this practical goal. Likewise, bosch if a scientist is endeavoring to sort out the nature of the cosmos, deep questions can be a similar sort of trap: she will be asking ever deeper questions rather than gathering data and doing math to answer her less deep questions.
Philosophy, as Socrates showed by deploying his Socratic method, can endlessly generate deep questions. Questions such as what is the nature of the universe? , what is time? , what is space? , what is good? and so on. Also, as Socrates showed, for each answer given, philosophy can generate more questions. It is also often claimed that this shows that philosophy really has no answers since every alleged answer can be questioned bosch or raises even more questions. Thus, philosophy seems to be rather bad for the scientist.
A key assumption seems to be that science is different from philosophy in at least one key way while it raises questions, proper science focuses on questions that can be answered or, at the very least, bosch gets down to the business of answering them and (eventually) abandons a question should it turn out to be a distracting deep question. Thus, science provides answers and makes progress. This, obviously enough, ties into another stock criticism of philosophy: philosophy makes no progress and is useless.
One rather bosch obvious reason that philosophy is regarded as not making progress and as being useless is that when enough progress is made on a deep question, it is perceived as being a matter for science rather than philosophy. For example, ancient Greek philosophers, such as Democritus, speculated about the composition of the universe and its size (was it finite or infinite?) and these were considered deep philosophical questions. Even Newton considered himself a natural philosopher. He has, of course, been claimed by the scientist (many of whom conveniently overlook the ro
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