Topics Philosophy

Question Does (and should) philosophy influence other disciplines? For example, does the philosophy of science have any real impact on the work of physicists or aesthetics on artists today? Did they ever? Does (and should) the philosophy of X do more than comment on and document X?

Accepted:
June 23, 2006

Comments

That's a hugely complex, and interesting, question. The answer to the ‘does’ part of the question is certainly ‘yes’, at least in the field of practicing artists with which I am much more familiar. However, the mode of influence is often unpredictable and surprising. First of all, a philosopher who sets out to influence the way artists work will almost certainly be ignored. Second, it is not necessarily the particular field of aesthetics that has influence: the philosophy of language has been taken up by poets, the philosophy of perception by painters, political thought or the metaphysics of freedom in the music of Beethoven or Wagner. Third, the influence is generally two-way: artistic achievements challenge philosophers to ‘keep up’, and again not always in the field of aesthetics.

The ‘should’ is trickier. In general, because an artist should have the freedom to find inspiration in pretty much anything; and if a philosopher provides inspiration to a scientist, so much the better too. But I would say the same about landscape gardening or fire safety regulations or whatever. So, should philosophy have any particular privilege in this area? I would say ‘yes’ to this too, but only to the extent that we agree that philosophy is good at issues of potentially wider significance. If a philosopher is a professional understander of things, so to speak, good at creating, analysing and explicating ideas that are not from the outset devoted to a particular discipline (like fire safety), then we might expect its wider influence to be of above average value.

Astronomers study the stars; philosophers of science study the astronomers. And just as astronomy is worthwhile even though it does not improve stellar behaviour, so philosophy of science may be worthwhile even if it does not improve the behaviour of astronomers.

Some scientists have nevertheless been influenced by philosophy. In the history of science, giants like Galileo, Newton, and Einstein come to mind in this connection. And some current scientists probably also come under the influence of philosophical ideas, for example Karl Popper's idea that it is important to think about negative evidence, about what sort of data would show that your hypothesis is wrong.

Philosophical influence on science may be beneficial, but one shouldn't exaggerate the case. For quite generally there is a big difference between being good at describing a practice and being good at doing it. For example, it's one thing to be good at coming up with hypotheses and testing them, quite another thing to be good at describing that process. So even good philosophical descriptions of scientific practice might not be in a form that is very useful to practicing scientists. And anyway, the descriptions that philosophers of science have come up with so far are strikingly poor.