I’m spending most of today’s blog hour doing some housekeeping on the blog itself. For today’s post, just one item, sorta deep, sorta light.
Big Think, Scotty Hendricks, 18 Jul 2023: 3 advances in philosophy that made science better, subtitled “Philosophy is often seen as little more than armchair speculation. This is a shame, as philosophy often has helped science reach new heights.”
Key Takeaways
• Philosophy is often ridiculed by scientists as being little more than armchair speculation. This is unfortunate because the scientific method itself is a product of philosophy. • Here, we discuss three major philosophical insights that directly led to advances in how science is performed. • These insights came from Francis Bacon, Alan Turing, Alonzo Church, and Noam Chomsky.
And I’ll just list the three ideas (with my glosses).
- Francis Bacon demands experimental data (the idea that science requires evidence is itself a philosophical thesis)
- The Church-Turing thesis made computers possible (philosophy helps identify what mathematical problems could be solved)
- Noam Chomsky starts the cognitive revolution (he overthrew the behaviorist model of the mind and brain)
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I’ve updated the Nonfiction reviews page to move the recent reviews down into the alphabetical sequence. There are still some major books read over the past decade that I haven’t yet blogged about, and there are stubs for those. There are also books read in the past 6 months or so not yet included.
