Philosophy & Science From A Scientist & A Philosopher

I haven't had much motivation to write lately. Not sure why. I have, however, had plenty motivation to read. Among the books I've been reading are Richard Feynman's The Meaning of It All and Paul Feyerabend's Against Method.

I've read three or four of Feynman's books before. This one is a collection of three lectures on science, religion, and philosophy. The lectures are transcriptions. And it shows; they're not very well written. But there are lots of Feynman's always-interesting anecdotes used to illustrate abstract ideas. I like this argument style a lot--although I can follow abstract arguments, I don't have a lot of faith in them to demonstrate anything important. Only when they're woven together with concrete examples do I really pay attention to the conclusions. Like Feynman, my allegiance lies with empiricism, not rationalism.

The book itself is most interesting for its exposition of science and scientific thinking. The main idea is that there's... not a method, exactly, but a set of values intrinsic to scientific thinking. These values are crucially important for truth-seeking, and they ought to be better respected, but truth-seeking isn't the only important thing in the world. Values themselves, for example, can't be discovered by the scientist. And values, of course, are valuable. Feynman, by his own admission, is not a philosopher, and some of his arguments are dubious, but they're all thought-provoking.

Feyerbend's book is a polemic on the philosophy of science, written by a philosopher. The thesis is interesting: Feyerbend argues for methodological "anarchy" in epistemology and science. The actual evidence to support the thesis isn't very impressive, however. There are too many controversial claims with too few--or zero!--specific citations to back them up. For that reason, it's hard to accept the claims of a philosopher about science over the views of an actual physicist--and a highly respected one at that. But don't take my word for it. Feynman wouldn't want you to.