Why Does Philosophy Matter in Science Education?

Every semester, I teach an undergraduate course in the philosophy of science at the University of New Hampshire. Most of the students who take this course do so only to fulfill general education requirements, and the majority of them have never attended a philosophy class before.

On the first day of the semester, I try to give them an overview of the subject of philosophy of science. I begin by explaining that philosophy addresses questions that cannot be resolved by data and facts alone, and that philosophy of science means applying this perspective to the domain of science. After that, I outline several core concepts of the course for them: induction, evidence, and the method of scientific inquiry. I tell them that scientific work proceeds through induction, using past empirical experiences drawn from observations to make general claims about what has not yet been observed, but that, from the philosophers' perspective, induction is insufficient justification and is therefore problematic for science.

I then point to the problem of deciding which evidence uniquely fits which hypothesis, and why making the right decision in this regard is essential in any scientific research. I teach them that the "scientific method" is not a single, straightforward method, and that there are serious debates about what the characteristics of scientific methodology should be. Finally, I teach them that these issues, although "philosophical," also have real consequences for how science is practiced.

Students often ask me these questions: "What is your own degree in?" "What school did you go to?" and "Are you a scientist?" Perhaps they ask these because, as a female philosopher of Jamaican descent, I embody a set of unfamiliar identities, and they are curious about that. This is undoubtedly partly true, but I think the matter runs deeper, because I have witnessed more conventional professors who have taught philosophy of science courses face the same kinds of questions. I did my graduate studies at Cornell University in New York, where I was a teaching assistant for the course "Evolution and Human Nature." The professor of this course had a very different physical appearance from mine: white, male, bearded, and sixty years old—precisely the image of an academic authority. Yet students were skeptical of his views on science because, as some would say dismissively, he "wasn't a scientist."

I suspect these reactions stem from concerns about the value of philosophy compared to science. It is no surprise that some of my students doubt that philosophers have anything useful to say about science. They are aware of the pronouncements by prominent scientists that philosophy is irrelevant to science, if not outright worthless and nonsensical. They know that STEM education (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is far more important than anything the humanities can offer us.

Many of the young people who attend my classes believe that philosophy is a vague and obscure academic discipline that deals only with opinions and beliefs, whereas science's business is discovering facts, presenting evidence, and disseminating objective truths. Moreover, many of them believe that answering philosophical questions is within the capability of scientists, but that philosophers are not qualified to address and examine scientific issues.

Why do incoming students so often treat philosophy as something entirely distinct from, and subordinate to, science? From experience, I know four reasons for this. One reason concerns a lack of historical awareness. Incoming students tend to think that the divisions of academic faculties reflect precise divisions in the world, and so they cannot grasp that philosophy and science, as well as the boundaries and alleged partitions between them, are among the dynamic creations of humanity. Some subjects that now bear the label “science” once had another title. Physics, the most reliable of the sciences, was once in the domain of “natural philosophy.” And the discipline of music was once taught in the faculty of mathematics. The scope of science has sometimes narrowed and sometimes broadened, depending on the time, place, and cultural contexts in which science has flourished and been applied.

Another reason relates to the tangible and concrete consequences of this mindset. Science is imagined to be the solver of the world’s real problems. Technology is the fruit of science: things we can touch, see, and use. Science has given us vaccines, biotechnological products, and pain-relieving drugs. Philosophy, in the eyes of my students, seems to have no tangible or concrete offerings to present. But, on the contrary, there are many tangible and concrete philosophical offerings. Albert Einstein’s philosophical thought experiments made the construction of the Cassini space orbiter possible. Aristotle’s logic laid the foundation for computer science, which has yielded our laptops and mobile phones. The work of philosophers on the mind-body problem was also an effective step in the formation of neurocognitive psychology and hence MRI technology, or brain imaging. Philosophy has always been quietly at work behind science.

The third reason concerns truth, objectivity, and bias. Students point out that science is completely objective, and no one disagrees with this view unless they cannot tell right from wrong. One whose research is preceded by a set of assumptions cannot be considered an objectivist. Such a person is more a person of “ideology.” But we all have “biases,” and our biases are the drivers of our creative work in the field of science. Addressing this topic can be difficult, because a crude concept of “objectivity” is deeply entrenched in the public imagination of what science is and its nature. To draw my students’ attention to this point, I ask them to look at something around them without any presuppositions. Then I ask them to tell me what they see. They pause ... and then realize that they cannot interpret their experiences without the aid of their prior conceptions. When they notice this, the idea that one can doubt objectivity in science no longer seems so strange to them.

The fourth source of students’ opposition originates from a conception they have about the content of scientific education. They apparently believe that science mainly catalogues existing things (“facts”) and that scientific education teaches them what these facts are. My work does not align with these expectations. As a philosopher, I am keenly intent on seeing how these facts are selected and interpreted, why some of them are considered more important than others, how these facts are laden with presuppositions, and things of that sort.

Students sometimes impatiently respond to these concerns by stating that “facts are facts.” But saying that something is itself says nothing important about it. What students mean by the phrase “facts are facts” is that once we have the “facts,” there is no room for interpretation or denial. Why do they think this? The reason is not that this is how science is practiced, but rather that this is the conventional mode of science education. There are countless facts and processes that students must master if they are to become scientifically literate, and yet they have limited time to learn those lessons. Scientists must design their curricula in such a way as to keep pace with the rapid expansion of empirical knowledge, and they do not have the leisure to devote class hours to questions for which they have likely not received the necessary training. An unintended consequence of this is that students often leave the course and the department without having become aware that philosophical questions are relevant to scientific theories and practical experience.

But it is not necessary for things to remain this way. If the right educational framework is formulated and implemented, philosophers like me should not have to swim against the current to convince our students that we have important things to say about science. To this end, we must enlist the help of our scientist colleagues, those whom students regard as the sole legitimate purveyors of “knowledge and understanding.” My proposal is a specific “division of labor” among academic colleagues. Our scientist colleagues should continue their work of teaching scientific fundamentals, but they can also make it clear to their students that science engages with a host of important conceptual, interpretive, methodological, and ethical issues that fall exclusively within the specialized domain of philosophers, and that philosophical topics are not only not extraneous and irrelevant to science but lie at the very heart of scientific discussions.

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Why Does Philosophy Matter in Science Education?

Translation: Afsaneh Dadgar

Subrena E. Smith is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of New Hampshire in the United States. What you have read is a translation of this piece by her:

Subrena E. Smith, ‘Why Philosophy Is So Important in Science Education,’ Aeon, 13 November 2017.

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