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    What Wayne Myrvold was too generous about

    I find much to agree with in Wayne's post.   I particularly agree with the point that "Our educational system isn’t particularly well suited for training philosophers who can engage seriously with the sciences."  I don't, of course, know what can be done about this, since I don't think the solution can be to spend less time learning philosophy and more time learning, e.g. physics. 

    But I also have two points on which I think I need to respond to Wayne.

    First, if he wants to call philosophers, (including maybe one or more from this blog) onto the carpet for being childish in their responses to Tyson, it's a bit misleading to only quote Tyson's final, most conciliatory, and most sensible remarks.   That was not the tone that, e.g., our own Jon Cogburn was responding to.   He was responding to what Tyson said in a much more wide-reaching forum, and to the bullying tone in which he did it.

    Second, there is a danger, which I worry Wayne is falling into, when we approach these kinds of issues. That's to compare the very best acheivements of Physics with the whole range of output of Philosophy.   Yes, we can all think of cases where philosophy got "bogged down in questions that are either pointless or meaningless."  But so, of course, do all of the sciences.   I bet more money got spent on studying faster than light-speed travelling neutrinos than has been spent on all of philosophy research in the last 20 years (every philosopher of physics I know predicted correctly how that episode would turn out.)   And I doubt there is any part of philosophy that is any more pointless than all the scientific research on differences in cognitive abilities between different races and sexes.  If you are going to disparage one field compared to another, compare best against best, or all against all, and do it on a per capita basis.    Done properly, its hard to know with any degree of confidence whether the value of philosophy's outout will measure up to that of physics over the last n years.

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    12 responses to “What Wayne Myrvold was too generous about”

    1. Wayne Myrvold Avatar
      Wayne Myrvold

      Fair enough! I don’t think I really disagree with any of this.
      (Btw, I quoted the final remarks, and not the earlier ones, because Massimo already quoted the earlier ones. Everyone who is interested should read those, or, better yet, listen to the Nerdist audio and watch the Poetry of Science video, so you get the tone of voice, also.)

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    2. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      “I bet more money got spent on studying faster than light-speed travelling neutrinos than has been spent on all of philosophy research in the last 20 years”.
      I’ll take that bet. At Fermi-estimate level, guesstimate 10 full professors at each of the top 50 philosophy departments earning the median professorial salary of $100K; over 20 years, that’s $1Bn. And that’s without beginning to count graduate students, other staff, buildings, conference costs, and indeed all the other universities. Even hiving some off for teaching, philosophy research over the last 20 years will have cost well into ten figures. Particle physics is expensive but not that expensive!

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    3. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      Hi David,
      I was referring to funded research. And also I was being a bit hyperbolic so I would only have to come up with one example of crappy physics. There are plenty more out there, I’m sure.

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    4. Jon Cogburn Avatar
      Jon Cogburn

      At least in the United States tuition from humanities programs very heavily subsidizes the hard sciences. We have no labs and our salaries are the lowest in the University.

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    5. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      I love Neil DeGrasse Tyson to death, which makes me reluctant to comment. Indeed, my first inclination was to say nothing at all, since his recent remarks were on a comedy podcast.
      All the same, I am concerned about the following passage (quoted by Dr. Myrvold) where it seems like he’s quite serious:

      I don’t know of anyone who received [philosophy] training in the 20th century that has contributed materially to the moving frontier of the physical sciences.

      What’s hard to believe is that appeals to ignorance could survive in the age of Google, especially when the subject matter is whether or not one’s own colleagues actually exist. The data is right there for anyone to find. Even a rink-a-dink grad student who doesn’t specialize in philosophy of physics — [pauses to point energetically at self] — can do a little work towards a refutation without much strain. I would be surprised if none of the authors on this list have made any material contributions to the relevant sciences.

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    6. Wayne Myrvold Avatar
      Wayne Myrvold

      @BLS Nelson, I think you’ve misunderstood that remark of Tyson’s. He’s not saying that nobody who has contributed to the advancement of the the physical sciences in the 20th century has received any philosophical training. There are oodles of scientists who have taken some philosophy courses at some point in their lives. In that sentence, “that training” refers to “the formal training that goes into making a professional Philosopher — the undergraduate and graduate curricula that serve as the foundation of a Philosopher’s academic training.”
      And though he doesn’t explicitly say so, I think what is meant is: that training and not also an advanced degree in the physical sciences.
      As to your list: though I don’t know the backgrounds of everyone on the list, at first glance it seems to be true that the people on the list who have made material contributions to the relevant sciences (e.g. Smolin, Ayala) are people with a Ph.D. in the relevant science and not one in philosophy.

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    7. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Hi Dr. Myrvold, thanks for your thoughts.

      In that sentence, “that training” refers to “the formal training that goes into making a professional Philosopher — the undergraduate and graduate curricula that serve as the foundation of a Philosopher’s academic training.”

      Yes, that was my assumption as well.
      Also, I agree that it’s reasonable to think that he may have meant something like professional philosophy training “and not also an advanced degree in the physical sciences”. But there’s what he meant and what he said, and I’m interested in pointing out what might be wrong with what he said.
      It’s also true that the list is based on people who hold, or have held, positions in connection with departments of philosophy. This does not indicate that they all have advanced graduate training in philosophy, but they should be the exception and not the rule. Since the details of their graduate training is useful information for a reader to have on hand, I’ll make the relevant additions to the post.

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    8. jdkbrown Avatar
      jdkbrown

      Abner Shimony–partly responsible for testable versions of Bell’s theorem–is a good candidate, though he does have a double PhD. Howard Stein (no physics PhD so far as I know) co-authored with him several times, at least once in a physics journal.

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    9. David Wallace Avatar
      David Wallace

      @BLS Nelson: at least in physics, I don’t think any of the works you quote could straightforwardly be identified as having “contributed materially to the moving frontier of the physical sciences”. Some of them are very good pieces of philosophy, but that’s not what’s at issue. (Smolin is the exception, but he’s a professional physicist, not a philosopher.)
      I’d be happy to be proved wrong. If any of those books have significant citations in the mainstream physics literature I’d love to hear it. (But I don’t think that can be your list criterion: Sider’s book, for instance, is in analytic metaphysics and doesn’t make any claims to advance science.)

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    10. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Hi Dr. Wallace, a good point, though it’ll take some effort to figure it out for the whole list. I’ll look into it.

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    11. BLS Nelson Avatar
      BLS Nelson

      Just an update for anyone interested. I pored through the data from Google Scholar. Of the list of 26 entries, 21 have been cited in at least one of the relevant scientific journals.
      (Caveat emptor: I didn’t make any effort to determine which journals are mainstream and which are not. Also, I have not done anything like a content analysis to determine the context in which a work is cited.)

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    12. Eric Winsberg Avatar
      Eric Winsberg

      That’s way too low of a standard, I think. My stuff gets cited in lots of science journals, including Science and Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society but I am a long way from “contributing materially to the moving frontier of the physical sciences.”

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