Richard Feynman was a Nobel prize-winning physicist, who is
perhaps best known these days for his role in the Rogers Commission which
investigated the Challenger disaster. It was Feynman who famously worked out
what had caused the disaster. He was as far from the stereotypical nerdy,
bespectacled, white coated boffin as it is possible to get. When I was a
student (of Physiology, not Physics) his memoir “Surely you’re joking, Mr
Feynman”[1] was a must read. One thing you won’t read in it is a quote about the
philosophy of science that’s usually attributed to Feynman: “The philosophy of
science is as useful to scientists and ornithology is to birds”. No one appears
to be able to pin down where and when he said (or wrote) this – hence the
brackets in the title of this blog piece. So it is possible that it’s not one
of his aphorisms. But it captures fairly accurately his attitude toward philosophy
in general and the philosophy of science in particular. It is an attitude probably
shared by not a few physicists.
Sir Peter Medawar, also a Nobel prize winner (this time for
Physiology and Medicine for his work on immunity), had a bit more time for
philosophy, at least to the extent that he was quite fond of perpetrating it.
He pointed out that if you ask a scientist about the scientific method, “….he
will adopt an expression that is at once solemn and shifty-eyed: solemn because
he feels he ought to declare an opinion; shifty-eyed because he is wondering
how to conceal the fact that he has no opinion to declare.”[2] What he was highlighting was that in
professional science we have tended not to think about the intellectual procedures
we follow, and we rarely explicitly teach them to students either. I was
expected to learn my scientific methodology through a combination of
observation and osmosis. Of course what this has meant is that when challenged to
articulate how we do what we do, we are apt to come up short. That was Medawar’s
point. Given the undoubted success of science in providing explanations for,
and control over, all sorts of aspects of the natural world, this apparent
vacuum about science itself was bound to be filled with something.
Of course on one level there have always been philosophers
of science. The list includes the like of Aristotle who philosophised about
science before science, as we know it now, existed. Bacon, Hume, Mill and Kant
all had something to say on the topic. Scientists did from time to time contribute;
Newton famously had a dig at hypothises. But throughout the 19th Century
a division began to set in between those on the outside talking about science,
and an increasingly professional cadre of scientists on the inside doing the
science. And it appeared that you could do it fairly successfully, without
actually knowing too much about how you were doing it. Perhaps this is when
(some) scientists started getting a bit sniffy about the philosophers. It didn’t
help that sometimes the description of science from the outside was not flattering.
In the 1960’s it was the philosopher Thomas Kuhn who talked about one set of new
scientific theories conquering and displacing an older less powerful set as a “conversion
experience that cannot be forced”[3]. Not entirely rational on Kuhn’s account. Interestingly,
his views were shaped by examples from physics and cosmology; perhaps this
explains the antipathy of at least some physicists to philosophers.
But thinking has to be done, concepts have to clarified, and
this is the proper province of philosophers. Yet even today there remains a bit
of a prejudice against burdening science students with thinking about what
science is and how it works. I used to be in charge of a large health sciences
module on research methods. As part of the module I introduced a session on the
philosophy of science, so that students would be introduced to a coherent
account of scientific methodology (the sort of thing that might avoid the situation
described by Medawar). To say that my colleagues thought that this was the
lowest of low priorities would be an understatement. It didn’t remain a part of
their course for very long!
However, there are a number of issues within contemporary
science that mean it is more important than ever that students are trained properly in scientific methodology,
and that as a profession we understand what we’re doing and to what standards.
There’s no harm at all in understanding research ethics (ethics being a branch
of philosophy no less), and being introduced to issues in research integrity. There
has always been successful and unsuccessful science. Some experiments work,
others fail. Some turn out to be misconceived and doomed to failure from the
start, at least when viewed with scientific hindsight. That’s all grist for the
scientific mill. But success and failure in scientific terms are not the same as
good and bad science, or for that matter good and bad scientists. The bad ones are
the ones that fabricate data and such like – in other words they lie and cheat.
This is of sufficient concern for governments, agencies and institutions to have
introduced research integrity codes of practice. Perhaps the best known example
of these is the Office of Research Integrity in the US.
Research misconduct certainly happens (as the ORI website
attests). It is not common, and it is not widespread (probably). Along with
proper policing and an open culture, better training might well improve the
situation. Clearer understanding of how science works and what is, and is not acceptable
practice, can only be a good thing. But more is required. This is about something
beyond science; one might even say that it requires knowledge of something
above science that underpins good science. Policies and procedures, clear
thinking (yes, aided by the philosophers) will get us so far. But at root, this
is about right and wrong, it is about values. But where do we get the right
values? This is not a scientific question at all. But science (as well as every
other area of human endeavour) depends on it.
Birds don’t need ornithology, but scientists do need lots of
resources from beyond science. Intellectually, the help of the philosophers
should be welcome. But an underpinning morality is needed too. And where are we
going to get that?
1. R.P. Feynman (1985) "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman".
2. P. Medawar (1982) "Induction and intuition in scientific thought" in "Pluto's Republic".
3.T.S.Kuhn (1962) "The structure of scientific revolutions"
