Are non-testable hypotheses worthy of discussion?

[Millennie Al]

"testable" now or ever? If ever, how do we know if a hypothesis will become testable. At one time it was thought that the composition of the sun would remain forever unknowable as it would not be possible to go there and take samples.

And "worthy" in what sense? It is only worthy if it advances serious human knowledge, or is it ok to be frivolous. Is it ok if it is merely a meaningless brief entertainment?

[warumich]

I don't want Warumich or Secret Squirrel to laugh out loud.

Seriously, I would not that - this looked quite interesting.

On a larger note, I have always tried to advocate that philosophers pay more serious attention to how researchers in actual practice think about their work. I even wrote my PhD on this, I was running around with a tape recorder and getting scientists' views on it all - it was meant to be an empirical investigation of how philosophical issues are being thought about by scientists. I had intended this to be an empirical contribution to the philosophy of science, but it ended up a sociology PhD instead, because empirical philosophy doesn't really exist, though it bl..dy well should. (Also I realised quite early on that the sociology job market looks much better than the philosophy one)

[secret squirrel]

OK, I'm not a philosophically educated at all. But I've spent a lot of time and thought on research, so I have my own personal take on it. I don't want Warumich or Secret Squirrel to laugh out loud...

I agree with warumich. I think the worst feature of traditional philosophy of science and mathematics is how it can ignore what scientists and mathematicians actually do. Though modern philosophy of science also has a tradition of taking history and practice seriously (coming from the work of e.g. Kuhn and Lakatos), so it's not all like that.

p.s. I'm not in the same bracket as warumich. He's a pro, while I'm more of a dabbler, though my day job is in a historically closely related field.

[Allo V Psycho]

I don't want Warumich or Secret Squirrel to laugh out loud.

Seriously, I would not that - this looked quite interesting.

On a larger note, I have always tried to advocate that philosophers pay more serious attention to how researchers in actual practice think about their work. I even wrote my PhD on this, I was running around with a tape recorder and getting scientists' views on it all - it was meant to be an empirical investigation of how philosophical issues are being thought about by scientists. I had intended this to be an empirical contribution to the philosophy of science, but it ended up a sociology PhD instead, because empirical philosophy doesn't really exist, though it bl..dy well should. (Also I realised quite early on that the sociology job market looks much better than the philosophy one)

Glad you thought it might be interesting! One thought that occurred to me when reading philosophers addressing science is that where they drew on practical examples, it seemed disproportionately from physics (but it is decades since I read this stuff so I may have misremembered). Biology is a bit different from physics, because of what Stephen J Gould called the 'contingent accidents of history', but also because of biological variation.

[warumich]

I don't want Warumich or Secret Squirrel to laugh out loud.

Seriously, I would not that - this looked quite interesting.

On a larger note, I have always tried to advocate that philosophers pay more serious attention to how researchers in actual practice think about their work. I even wrote my PhD on this, I was running around with a tape recorder and getting scientists' views on it all - it was meant to be an empirical investigation of how philosophical issues are being thought about by scientists. I had intended this to be an empirical contribution to the philosophy of science, but it ended up a sociology PhD instead, because empirical philosophy doesn't really exist, though it bl..dy well should. (Also I realised quite early on that the sociology job market looks much better than the philosophy one)

Glad you thought it might be interesting! One thought that occurred to me when reading philosophers addressing science is that where they drew on practical examples, it seemed disproportionately from physics (but it is decades since I read this stuff so I may have misremembered). Biology is a bit different from physics, because of what Stephen J Gould called the 'contingent accidents of history', but also because of biological variation.

I concur, certainly the big famous 20th century philosophers of science like Popper, Kuhn etc are all laughably physics focussed, as if there's nothing else. It's changed somewhat there are some fantastic philosophers of biology around in the current generation, but yea if all you're doing is reading the classics, then you're right.





Mind, there's a bit of a general problem with definitions here, in that if as a philosopher you're interested in producing a definition of what science is then you'll need to have a starting point - because you're only able to think about producing a definition of science if you have a preconceived idea of it. (if you see what I mean. I can't philosophise you a definition of a lubble jubble since I have absolutely no clue what a lubble jubble is to start with). So, no matter how much you want to slide down the icy slopes of philosophical logic, at the end you'll always end up trying to justify your preconceived prejudices. I don't really see another way really. So, physics is the prototypical science, the one area of the academy where you will never find anyone disagreeing with you that at least this is a science, and then you base your definition of science around that. So all of Popper's, or Ayer's or Hempel's logic is really all about justifying something that is at base a social construct and then pretending it's logic all the way down. Maybe that's another reason why I swapped sociology for philosophy of science, it's more honest.

There's a parallel problem in the philosophy of religion by the way - if you look up dictionary definitions of religion, you'll see that they basically describe Protestantism, and that other world religions - the further away you go from Protestantism the worse it gets - always seem to fall short of the required standards for religion in some way. Like the way Buddhism doesn't really have any gods. Or there's apparently no belief in an afterlife in Ancient (pre-Roman) Judaism. No church or organisational hierarchy in shamanism. And so on. It's only because the first academics who were interested in defining religion were all Protestants, and they were comparing what they encountered in other countries with religion as they knew it, and then were able to conveniently judge them for falling short.

All very fascinating. Buy my book!