The Roles of Philosophy in An Age of Science

Lately, the conversations I’ve been having here and with friends on other sites have focused my attention on the question, “what is the role of philosophy in an age of science?” (I have a long-standing interest in this question, as someone who pursued an undergraduate degree in biology and switched to philosophy for graduate study.)

Here are a couple of options that I think deserve to be taken seriously — though I think there are reasons for thinking that some of them are preferable to others — in coming up with this list I was inspired by Ian Barbour‘s models on science and religion —

(1) total separation: science inquires into a posteriori truths, and philosophy inquires into a priori truths, so nothing that science has to say can affect philosophy, or the other way around. (Another version of total separation puts the emphasis on the distinction between the descriptive project of science and the normative project of philosophy — “how ought we to live?” is not, at first blush, a scientific question.)

(2) conflict — philosophy makes claims about the human condition, experience, value, meaning (etc.) that are undermined by the causal explanations provided by science. Under the conflict model, science takes priority over philosophy, or philosophy takes priority over science. For example, phenomenology took the position that a distinctive kind of philosophical inquiry was the foundation of the sciences and made the sciences possible. (Though phenomenology might be better classified under separation than under conflict — it depends on the particular phenomenologist, perhaps.)

(3) dialogue — the sciences benefit from the reflective analysis practiced in philosophy for refining their basic concepts and assumptions, and philosophy benefits from the new empirical discoveries that science discloses. So philosophers can contribute the metaphysics of physics or the epistemology of scientific inquiry, for example.

(4) integration — a fully philosophical science and a scientific philosophy.

I would position myself somewhere between (3) and (4) — I think that the philosophy is most successful when it creates new conceptions that give voice to the problems and opportunities disclosed by new scientific discoveries*, e.g. re-conceiving the concepts of selfhood and autonomy in light of neuroscience, or in re-conceiving the concepts of matter and causation in light of quantum physics.

* though not just new scientific discoveries — new kinds of artistic creations and political relations can and should also prompt the philosopher to create new concepts.

104 thoughts on “The Roles of Philosophy in An Age of Science”

Mike Elzinga,

I might have spoken a bit too soon — I still need to look over the article carefully, but my sense from looking it over quickly is that while he does a good job of distinguishing between science and metaphysics, he doesn’t say anything about the politics of science education. In particular he doesn’t say anything about whether or not any metaphysics, theistic or naturalistic, belongs in science classrooms. I can see arguments being made both ways (in fact, I’ve argued both sides of this myself), but Rockwell is pretty unclear on that point.

I suppose one way of putting it would be, can we distinguish between science and metaphysics for the purposes of public school science education without relying on deeply flawed philosophies of science, e.g. the verificationism of the positivists or Popper’s falsificationism? I think it would take an extraordinarily gifted educator to both insist on the distinction between science and pseudoscience and create a space in the students could explore the difference between science and metaphysics.

I’d be happier with an educational policy along those lines after all the other crises in American public education have been solved.

Kantian Naturalist: I’d be happier with an educational policy along those lines after all the other crises in American public education have been solved.

After I retired from research, I had the good fortune to be able to postpone retirement and spend ten years teaching in a program for gifted and talented high school students at a math/science center before I finally retired for good. It was a lot of fun.

We had only a small amount of time to get into such issues; these students were on a fast track, starting with calculus in the ninth grade and heading up from there. They went off to some of the best colleges and universities in the country.

While it may be interesting to explore metaphysical issues – I studied a lot of philosophy as an undergraduate and graduate student, and I have a pretty decent library of this stuff – there is little time in a fast-paced program even for gifted and talented students.

Many of these students will enter college already having several publications in peer reviewed journals. They are extremely focused and have broad interests – the arts, music, and philosophical issues being among them. But they are also very competitive and want to get into the depths of whatever discipline they choose as soon as they can.

I also know a little about what goes on in some of the regular high schools. There are so many other issues that compete for educational time that any thought of taking up philosophical issues – except in Advanced Placement Philosophy – is out of the question.