There's another story I vaguely remember (though not the title or author), where a time-traveler tries to jump-start science among the Greeks and they just decide it's too much trouble. Or maybe I am remembering "Aristotle and the Gun."
That's the one that resonates with my experience as a biology teacher. Even in easy-fied virtual experiments like Jon Herron's "Frog Pond," most students get bored and start trying to test a new hypothesis before they have enough data to rule out the first one. I've often said that the scientific personality involves a very weird combination of a low tolerance for authority and a high tolerance for boredom.
Aarrgghh! You've put 2/3rds of my second semester of philosophy into a single post. And I'm so sharing it with my students... after we get to Kant. On second thought, maybe I'll just give them this: "Philosophy is deep. Science only works if it’s shallow." That's why I teach phil and not science.
"Apparently not, at least according to Strevens. Aristotle was plenty rational, and a keen observer of the world. But he was also a philosopher, and accordingly there was a lot of philosophy in his explanations: teleology, aesthetics, common sense, and logic. And why wouldn’t there be? If you’re trying to understand the world, why wouldn’t you bring every field of knowledge and every way of thinking to bear?"
There's a competing (?) take on the development of science that it required an a priori (or perhaps theological, depending on the telling) belief in a rational, ordered, consistent universe, where an observation at one time would have bearing on an observation at another, barring extraordinarily rare miracles. Is this kind of presupposition or meta belief consistent with the approach that everything other than empirical observation must be shunted firmly aside?
Yeah, I've come across that take (maybe something Charles Taylor said?) I guess my initial take is that there is an axis related to "consistent universe" but it works best when it's in the middle. You believe experimental results are replicable, but you're not looking for some overarching model like a magic system in a fantasy novel.
I thought of that as I wrote it, but the current best guess of the overarching model for everything is so weird that no ancient philosopher would ever have arrived at it...
"Richard Feynman once opined that physics should not be taught in high school because high school teachers screwed it up so badly that kids only learned to hate physics instead of seeing its beauty."
What subjects remain if we generalize this, though?
I’m not sure why it should be “irrational” to impose restrictions on your inquiry. Compartmentalization of inquiry from emotion seems to be at the very heart of rationality.
In it the authors make this interesting comment that a complete theory has a component (ie variable) for every real thing, and no others. Science is the process of making a model and checking if it’s “real”—whether changing the inputs correctly predicts an observed output.
I think that Strevens is arguing that they're not dispensing with emotion they're dispensing with world building—the idea that the world should make sense. Which is arguably rational, but needs to be dispensed with.
It does sound like the paper is right down the line of what Strevens is proposing. Reality is uncovered through empirical observation, and only that.
Science fiction has played with this idea repeatedly.
https://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/97011/time-travel-short-story-trying-to-give-ancient-greeks-a-head-start-in-science
There's another story I vaguely remember (though not the title or author), where a time-traveler tries to jump-start science among the Greeks and they just decide it's too much trouble. Or maybe I am remembering "Aristotle and the Gun."
That's the one that resonates with my experience as a biology teacher. Even in easy-fied virtual experiments like Jon Herron's "Frog Pond," most students get bored and start trying to test a new hypothesis before they have enough data to rule out the first one. I've often said that the scientific personality involves a very weird combination of a low tolerance for authority and a high tolerance for boredom.
Aarrgghh! You've put 2/3rds of my second semester of philosophy into a single post. And I'm so sharing it with my students... after we get to Kant. On second thought, maybe I'll just give them this: "Philosophy is deep. Science only works if it’s shallow." That's why I teach phil and not science.
I appreciate both your frustration and your kind words. And I understand the appeal of depth.
Possibly I'm leaving this comment too soon, but:
"Apparently not, at least according to Strevens. Aristotle was plenty rational, and a keen observer of the world. But he was also a philosopher, and accordingly there was a lot of philosophy in his explanations: teleology, aesthetics, common sense, and logic. And why wouldn’t there be? If you’re trying to understand the world, why wouldn’t you bring every field of knowledge and every way of thinking to bear?"
There's a competing (?) take on the development of science that it required an a priori (or perhaps theological, depending on the telling) belief in a rational, ordered, consistent universe, where an observation at one time would have bearing on an observation at another, barring extraordinarily rare miracles. Is this kind of presupposition or meta belief consistent with the approach that everything other than empirical observation must be shunted firmly aside?
Yeah, I've come across that take (maybe something Charles Taylor said?) I guess my initial take is that there is an axis related to "consistent universe" but it works best when it's in the middle. You believe experimental results are replicable, but you're not looking for some overarching model like a magic system in a fantasy novel.
"some overarching model"
aka the holy grail of physics? ;)
I thought of that as I wrote it, but the current best guess of the overarching model for everything is so weird that no ancient philosopher would ever have arrived at it...
https://youtu.be/lu4mH3Hmw2o?is=LJqQjZZAYokfDnen
"Richard Feynman once opined that physics should not be taught in high school because high school teachers screwed it up so badly that kids only learned to hate physics instead of seeing its beauty."
What subjects remain if we generalize this, though?
Physics at least is optional.
Does it generalize? Is it possible that certain subjects are easier to screw up than others?
I’m not sure why it should be “irrational” to impose restrictions on your inquiry. Compartmentalization of inquiry from emotion seems to be at the very heart of rationality.
Related, I recently listened to a cool review of the EPR paper (https://youtu.be/D6zJR5d2bs0?is=L3FBowXIeWi4iAzf)
In it the authors make this interesting comment that a complete theory has a component (ie variable) for every real thing, and no others. Science is the process of making a model and checking if it’s “real”—whether changing the inputs correctly predicts an observed output.
I think that Strevens is arguing that they're not dispensing with emotion they're dispensing with world building—the idea that the world should make sense. Which is arguably rational, but needs to be dispensed with.
It does sound like the paper is right down the line of what Strevens is proposing. Reality is uncovered through empirical observation, and only that.
Your review reminded me af Sabine Hossenfelders account of the current state of particle physics