Professional philosophy exists so that questions, and our capacity to ask questions, are preserved for society. These questions may come to be relevant one day. Philosophy of science exists so that scientific knowledge can be preserved and developed in a broad sense that goes beyond the current paradigms.
That, and what follows are extracts from an excellent essay, Philosophy as complementary science, by Hasok Chang in The Philosopher’s Magazine (July 6, 2009):
The classic clash between Kuhn and Karl Popper from the 1960s illustrates an important aspect of my proposal. To Popper’s insistence that criticism was “the lifeblood of all rational thought”, Kuhn retorted: “To turn Sir Karl’s view on its head, it is precisely the abandonment of critical discourse that marks the transition to a science.” In return, Popper declared that Kuhnian normal science, in which serious questioning of the ruling paradigm was discouraged, was “a danger to science and, indeed, to our civilization.” In my own life, I began on Popper’s side of this debate: as an undergraduate student studying physics, I was always dissatisfied with the unquestioning attitude that I was expected to take about the fundamentals of physics. My professors, who were mostly “normal” scientists, often answered my questions with a killer non-answer: “It’s a philosophical question.” I went on to do a PhD in philosophy, almost out of spite, full of regret about the state of physics. Over the years, however, I came to recognize that Kuhn had a point about how science required a narrow focus. Yet society needs the critical attitude. The solution to the Popper–Kuhn dilemma is to leave normal science alone, but to practise philosophy of science alongside it, as a complement. So I came to see philosophy of science as a continuation of science by other means (to paraphrase Clausewitz).
… A need for philosophy of science in the complementary mode, or complementary science as I will call it, arises from the fact that specialist science cannot afford to be completely open. (I speak of “specialist science” rather than “normal science”, so as not to distract those who reject Kuhn’s particular ideas about normal science or paradigms.) There are two aspects to this necessary lack of openness. First, in specialist science many elements of knowledge must be taken for granted, since they are used as foundations or tools for studying other things. This also means that certain ideas and questions must be suppressed if they are heterodox enough to contradict or destabilize the taken-for-granted items of knowledge. Such are the necessities of specialist science, quite different from a gratuitous suppression of dissent. Second, not all worthwhile questions can be addressed in specialist science, simply because there are limits to the number of questions that a given community can afford to deal with at a given time. Each specialist scientific community will have some degree of consensus about which problems are most urgent, and also which problems can most plausibly be solved. Those problems that are considered either unimportant or unsolvable will be neglected. All this is not malicious or misguided neglect, but a reasonable act of prioritization necessitated by limitations of material and intellectual resources.
All the same, we must face up to the fact that suppressed and neglected questions represent a loss of knowledge, actual and potential. The complementary function of philosophy of science is to recover and even create such questions and, hopefully, some answers to them as well. Therefore the desired result of research in philosophy of science in this mode is an enhancement of our knowledge and understanding of nature.
… Superficially, it might appear that critical philosophical scrutiny would undermine scientific knowledge, because it tends to generate various degrees of doubt about the accepted truths of science. Generating doubt may seem like the precise opposite of generating knowledge, but I would argue that constructive skepticism can enhance the quality of knowledge. If something is actually uncertain, our knowledge is superior if it is accompanied by an appropriate degree of doubt rather than blind faith. If the reasons we have for a certain belief are inconclusive, being aware of the inconclusiveness prepares us better for the possibility that other reasons may emerge to overturn our belief. In practice it is going to be very difficult for specialists to maintain this kind of critical vigilance on the foundations of their own practice, except in isolated cases. The task is much more easily and naturally undertaken by philosophers of science.
… Having spelled out the notion of philosophy as complementary science, I would like to return to the question I posed at the beginning: what is the use of philosophy? There is one common impression of philosophy that hits the nail on its head: it is impractical. We tend to call something a “philosophical” question if it is something that we do not normally need to deal with in the course of routine action. There are various reasons why relevant questions may be excluded from a system of thought or practices. The questions may be too general; they may threaten some basic beliefs within the system; asking them may be pointless because every specialist knows and agrees on the correct answers; the answers may not make any significant practical difference; and so on. And in the end, questioning has to be selective because it is simply impossible to ask the infinity of all possible questions. But philosophy can function as the embodiment of the ideal of openness, or at least a reluctance to place restrictions on the range of valid questions. Professional philosophy exists so that questions, and our capacity to ask questions, are preserved for society. These questions may come to be relevant one day. Philosophy of science exists so that scientific knowledge can be preserved and developed in a broad sense that goes beyond the current paradigms.
Is philosophy as I conceive it a normative enterprise in relation to the practices of life that it considers? More specifically, is philosophy of science normative in relation to science? Is complementary science normative in relation to orthodox specialist science? These are difficult questions to answer unequivocally, and I think the subtlety of the issue can be captured as follows: complementary science is critical but not prescriptive in relation to specialist science.
I hope you’ll take a few minutes to read the full piece. It’s very good. Be sure to read the his three paragraphs that follow my last quote, above. [ link ]
-Julie
I’ll try and read the rest but, for the moment, I am deeply disturbed by the idea of a complementary area of thinking to something like Science since it is such an occurrence in Medicine (CAM, complementary and alternative medicine) that has caused such grief recently (e.g. the vaccine “controversy”). By the same token we have to realize that most of the major advances in Science, and maybe Medicine, come from “blue sky” research. Confining oneself the the grant process of the NIH has produced prodigious numbers of Journal articles in Cancer, Cancer Research, JCO, etc. etc. , but not very much further towards finding good, non toxic treatments for cancer. There is movement to loosen the system to let a few bright lights shine. But who is a bright light?
Comment by Dr. C. — July 8, 2009 @ 10:44 pm