Science and the Arts

I’d just add…and the confidence with which we can toss some things there.

I’d just add…and the confidence with which we can toss some things there.

I was going to ask this below on the Rawls thread. For professional philosophers, I guess Schopenhauer is fairly laughable and the Tractatus largely refuted and superseded.

And yet there is still people like me, whatever that group is, who reads them, and not only as literature. And I doubt I would find Quine, Grice, Davidson as enjoyable or in some sense, as useful. Does this make me a Philistine or psuedo-intellectual?

Brian points out that the rubish heap in philosophy is larger than is usually supposed; I’d like to add that the rubbish heap in science may be smaller than is often supposed. Many philosophers of science have recently come to endorse the idea that there have been very few widely accepted, testable theories in established sciences in the past few centuries that have been fundamentally wrong. Of course, it often turns out that the accepted theory was missing some important details: e.g. early propontents of atomic theory did not know what atoms were made of, but they had the right idea. This isn’t to say that there haven’t been a few serious blunders, but among widely accepted scientific theories, the phlogiston theory may be the exception rather than the rule.

I believe that the locus classicus of this view is a book by Stathis Psillos called _Scientific Realism_; he deals with a lot of historical examples in depth.

Of course, the notion that it’s the size of the rubbish heapof wrong theories–as opposed to the body of evidence we have for currently accepted theories–that justifies our belief in the truth of science reeks of Popperianism, a view that many would consider a denizen of the philosophical rubbish heap.

That is one reason that makes Berkeleyism good! Everyone can benefit from studying Berkeleyism. Much fewer will benefit from studying superstrings.

Bob,

read Brian O’ Shaughnessy’s work — particularly The Will – A Dual Aspect Theory, if you can find it. Profoundly influenced by Schopenauer. And BOS is still widely well thought of, I think. Rightly so, in my view, though its all out of my area of expertise.

I find cavalier the attitude of modern science towards the ‘rubbish heap’ of philosophy. Strange arrogance? As to Berkeley or Schopenhauer, they bring to mind old Kant, now the object of Rortyean scorn for his foundationalism. If I recall Kant challenged the foundationalism of metaphyscial systems and of empiricism built in.

What is to decide all of this? Darwin’s theory of evolution, that metaphysical research program, which generalizes about a totality without observing it, a prime candidate for the charge of metaphysics? We can see the lowball get underway with Dewey’s ‘seminal’ capitulation to Darwin. This new foundationalism is more outrageous than anything from rational psychology, theology, and the rest This refers to Darwin’s theory, not the fact of evolution.
Hmm, didn’t Bohm find the theory of relativity confirmation of the Kantian ‘limit’, the boundary of the phenomenal? Physicists are rightly terrified of quantum mechanics, and it requires almost constant suppression of the obvious suggestion of severe ‘reality’ problems. see page xv of N. Herbert’s diagram of Benjamin Bunny getting strapped down for a reality check by the ‘Professor’.

And as for (early) Wittgenstein, he seems to state the problem precisely at the dawn of the logical positivist spree, a tad Schopenhaurish.

heh, that’s a funny, if inaccurate story joe.

so, anyway, you could go in any number of directions with Henry’s quote. it’s basically saying that science, despite embarrassments such as phlogiston and phrenology, proceeds by a method which is more likely to arrive at truth, knowledge and all that.

But it’s a bit of a non sequitur because (i) science can’t replace politics or philosophy, (ii)science is influenced by politics and philosophy*, and politics and philosophy are sensitive to facts, including scientific facts.

now religion does tend to follow the method of authority, but it is nevertheless sensitive to science, politics, philosophy, everyday life

* the author may need an exorcism because he seems to be possessed by the late, great ideas of karl popper, a philosopher

I can think of view areas of inquiry with a larger rubbish heap than Christian theology, but I have yet to meet anyone who has been persuaded of Christianity because of the number of heretics that have been excluded down through the years.

I thought Berkeleyism was still taught because not as a practical guide on how to cook eggs but because it is illuminates a wide range of issues like perception, knowledge theory, theology, semiotics, and so on. In a round-about way it gives an insight into the modern political strategy of repeating lies until they become truth.

String theory currently is a bit short on practical consequences at present too, and, in future could well be supplanted by new, better or more elegant approaches in mathematical physics.

But yesterday’s thoroughly criticized and discredited ideas in philosophy are tommorrow’s bright new ideas in psychology!

Surely philosophy’s quondam relevance for the conduct of life can not have been forgotten in the mounting strata of academicism? It hardly seems to me that such a concern is fit for the rubbish heap, no matter how fantastical it has become…

“Orthodoxy” creates heresies. Create one category and you create the other. The “one great thing about the Church” is that it creates these categories. What’s in them hardly matters.

John Rawls and G.E. Moore are good examples of significant philosophers whose work was neither intuitively convincing or even particularly interesting, but had all the features necessary to produce a successful orthodoxy. The elements of their work touch on all the main procedural questions of their day and provide examples which usefully clarify the possible approaches to those questions. As a result, anybody “coming to the table” can line themselves up for or against different points of the orthodoxy, and the whole enterprise is much simplified by a common terminology. These guys often are excellent teachers as well, which means they produce lots of students who do well and have an easy time networking, etc.

Unfortunately people forget, or never learn, the significance of these operational considerations, with the extremely unfortunate result that the content of these philosophers’ work is taken seriously long after they are dead and gone and their contemporary procedural questions are no longer relevant. Aristotle is the worst example.