By CoyotePrime (Reporter)
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“A One-Minute Course In The Philosophy Of Science”
by Chet Raymo

“There was a time in my life, many years ago, when I immersed myself in the philosophy of science. I wanted to understand what science was and on what basis it could lay claim to truth. I read everyone from Plato to Popper. I sat in on classes with Paul Feyerabend at the London School of Economics and wondered what the hell the great man was saying. I gobbled up Thomas Kuhn and Jacques Monad like candy. And when it was all over, I didn’t know much more about science than when I started. The history of science is infinitely interesting, but the philosophy of science is pretty much a bust. Scientists are generally oblivious of the philosophical assumptions underpinning their work, which can be written down on a half-sheet of notepaper:

• There is an external world independent of our perceptions.

• There are patterns in that world that can be expressed mathematically.

• The external world can be known with an ever greater degree of verisimilitude.

• The proof is in the pudding.

Beyond that, ho hum.

Scientific method? Here’s what the biologist Lewis Wolpert suggests: “Try many things; do what makes your heart leap; challenge expectation; cherchez le paradox; be sloppy so that something unexpected happens, but not so sloppy that you can’t tell what happened; never try to solve a problem until you can guess the answer; seek simplicity; seek beauty.”

- http://blog.sciencemusings.com/

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