Philosophers and Scientists
What is science, and why are we afraid of it?
Science is simply the natural philosophy. Philosophy as we recall means the study of knowledge. Today we think of philosophy as the study of the writings of philosophers asking questions like "How do I know I exist?" or "What is the meaning of Life?" Philosophy is more than that, it covers all knowledge.
In modern thought, true philosophy is broken up into the various departments of the modern University. There are Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, History, Biology, Medicine, Law, Social Studies departments and more. Modern Philosophy has become everything not covered by other departments. These other departments have become separated because the subject grew to large to be under the same roof. The Philosophy department has weakened itself by giving birth to separate areas of study. Based on ancient Philosophy and its direction we should have the Philosophy department as an oversight department. The University philosophers should be looking over the shoulders of the rest of the school asking questions about the connectivity of the various subjects through out the University.
In reality the Philosophy department has put itself in the basement of the University. The department has found it difficult to explain its purpose to the administrators and it has failed to raise money from grants to support itself. It has somehow found a niche in teaching ethics and logic at some universities, but overall it has failed in proclaiming itself as the basis of all knowledge.
Why haven’t philosophers taken their inherited lead in the pursuit of knowledge? Well, one reason for this is philosophers haven’t been following the developments in all the other departments in the university. This is because modern science requires specialized knowledge in order to debate different observations. A detailed understanding of statistics is needed in order to argue the significance of experiments. An understanding of calculus is needed to argue many of the theories of modern physics. Many philosophers go into philosophy because mathematics is not their strong point, even though they have an enormous curiosity. They learn the art of argument without learning the technical details of the subject. This is quite like the Sophists and Socrates in ancient Greece. Of course some well informed philosophers exist, but this is not the norm. I believe this is because of the overwhelming amount of information needed to understand the grand scheme of the Universe.
Therefore, science is a subset of philosophy, seperated because it had become successful in its pursuit of a specific area of knowledge. The success results in an enormous growth in popularity of the specific area of knowledge. It also results in the use of specialized tools used in this pursuit. This popularity produces an exclusive group of people who trust each others use of the new tools to the exclusion of others. Once this happens the exclusivity tends to isolate the group from all others.
Initially, isolation has a positive benifit. Only someone versed in the ways of the subject, and its tools are able to contribute to the developement of the subject. This minimizes errors of those learning the ways of this new knowledge. In the long run, however, the tools become the way of knowledge and new tools become difficult to introduce. Only those trained on the ‘old’ tools gain membership into the group. This effects the ease in which new scientists can enter the field and contribute to it. A general scientist or philosopher would find it difficult to become versed enough in the field to become accepted as a welcome contributer to the field. On the other hand, he may only need to know a few things at the cutting edge in order to make an important contribution to the field.
If a scientist from another field or a scientist has difficulty understanding an isolated field of science, then how can the general population understand the forefront of scientific discovery? As this information trickles down from the researchers to the general population it is gradually simplified and presented for popular consumption from Scientific Journalist to Popular Journalist to Talkshow Host. The information goes through a telephone like transformation from the carefully observed facts to wild suggestive implications of what the observations may mean. The basic problem today is the pipeline of information from researchers to general scientists to the general public. If researchers were encouraged to write research papers for general scientific consumption, the pipeline to the general population could be broadened. Science writers for the general population are generally trained in some field of science.What can be done to encourage the scientific community to discribe their work in straight forward general science descriptions? First of all, scientific journals should encourage jargon free submissions. Jargon is generally used to condense ideas understood within the field of study, but is not known outside the field.
1) Terms not understood outside of the field should be defined either in the text of the paper, or in an appendix of the paper.
2) Key concepts should be highlighted pointing out subtle effects.
3) Papers should be reviewed by graduate students from another field of study.
4) Michael Forbush should write about it so everyone will understand it.
So, if scientists everywhere were to follow these recomendations it would be a much happier place. At least for me.
Michael Forbush3-10-99
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