Re: Question: Philosophy of Science - is it Relevant?


Michael Nuwer wrote:
> John Wilkins wrote:
> >
> > That's a rather broader question. Popper of course has been adduced to support
> > everything from Mendelian genetics to phylogenetic systematics (and has very
> > little impact on the actual science). Likewise Kuhn. But David Hull and Elliot
> > Sober have influenced the disciplines they have addressed, particularly
> > Sober's _Reconstructing the Past_ on cladistics. Lately Sober has been working
> > with a biologist, David Sloan Wilson, on selection theory and evolutionary
> > psychology.
>
> John, What, in your view, are the qualities that the philosopher brings
> to a discussion of biological theories? Are they "outsiders" looking in
> and offering unique views? Do they have tools (disciplinary tools) that
> the biologist doesn't have? Can philosophers offer something more to
> biology than a biologist who reads and absorbs philosophy?

Hard to say. IMO there is nothing unique to philosophy
methodologically. I suspect it has more to do with the traditions
(Locke, Kant, etc.) and the live issues in philosophy that keep popping
up in science again and again.

Biologists who do philosophy, such as Mayr or Ghiselin or the cladists,
often do very bad philosophy. Of course, so do a lot of philosophers.
>
> Another thing that seems interesting to me is why many philosophers have
> found an interest in biology. By comparison, I can't think of any
> philosopher who has found an interest in economics. Economists might
> read this or that philosopher and they might absorb some of the
> philosopher's ideas, but that's about as far as the collaboration goes.
> Biology seems to be quit different.

There are philosophers of economics. There are philosophers of pretty
well everything. The philosophy of biology seems to have derived from
the, in hindsight obvious, realisation that philosophical issues in
physics and chemistry (the so-called "general" sciences) are quite
different in biology (issues such as theory reduction, axiomatisation,
and so on) along with the rise of biology as *the* science of the era.

See

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/economics/
>
> Michael Nuwer
> nuwermj at potsdam dot edu
>
>
>
> >
> > Sahotra Sarkar is influential in molecular genetics and conservation biology,
> > but he works in both professions, so perhaps he doesn't count. Paul Griffiths
> > and his collaborators ahs infleunced the debate over public policy and
> > genetics, and also a number of developmental biologists use his ideas in their
> > work. How much it affects their methodology I can't say, but it affects their
> > overall views to a degree.
> >
> > The inclusion in phylogenetics of Maximum Likelihood probably (pun intended!)
> > derives from work done by people like Carnap on Bayesian inference.
> >
> > That's off the top of my head.
> >


.

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