Philosophy is disparaged often enough, and by people who ought to know better. As of late, every time this happens I think of this scene — but with the text (something like) below…..
Oh. Okay. I see.
You think this has nothing to do with you.
You go to your desk and you select, I don’t know, some statistical mathematical model, for instance, because you’re trying to show the world that you take science seriously and follow what you think are established scientific practices.
But what you don’t know is that that mathematical model is not just established science.
It’s not a data model. It’s not a model of phenomena.
It’s actually a deductive nomological model.
And you’re also blithely unaware of the fact that in 1277, the Bishop of Paris proclaimed that a multiplicity of worlds could exist.
And then I think it was Pascal, wasn’t it, who argued that probabilistic mathematics could be applied to situations?
And then mathematical models quickly showed up in many different philosophies.
And then it, uh, filtered down through to natural philosophy and then trickled on down into some basic handbook of science, where you, no doubt, adopted it without another thought.
However, that statistical model represents millions of hours and countless lives. And it’s sort of comical how you think that you’ve made a choice that exempts you from philosophy, when, in fact, you’re using ideas that were selected for you by the people in this room.
