On a recent episode of the Nerdist podcast, Neil deGrasse Tyson dismissed philosophy as a useless enterprise, advising students to avoid it. It's not the first time he's made such remarks, prompting biologist and philosopher Massimo Pigliucci to write a must-read response.


Above: Screen cap from Cosmos.

"[The] offense is particularly egregious, for two reasons," writes Pigliucci at his blog, "first, because he is a highly visible science communicator; second, because I told him not to, several times."


de Grasse Tyson made his comments after a Nerdist host mentioned that he majored in philosophy.

"That can really mess you up," countered NdGT. To which the host responded, "I always felt like maybe there was a little too much question asking in philosophy [of science]?"

Here's the rest of the relevant dialogue (annotations via Pigliucci):

dGT: I agree. interviewer: At a certain point it's just futile. dGT: Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. My concern here is that the philosophers believe they are actually asking deep questions about nature. And to the scientist it's, what are you doing? Why are you concerning yourself with the meaning of meaning? (another) interviewer: I think a healthy balance of both is good. dGT: Well, I'm still worried even about a healthy balance. Yeah, if you are distracted by your questions so that you can't move forward, you are not being a productive contributor to our understanding of the natural world. And so the scientist knows when the question "what is the sound of one hand clapping?" is a pointless delay in our progress. [insert predictable joke by one interviewer, imitating the clapping of one hand] dGT: How do you define clapping? All of a sudden it devolves into a discussion of the definition of words. And I'd rather keep the conversation about ideas. And when you do that don't derail yourself on questions that you think are important because philosophy class tells you this. The scientist says look, I got all this world of unknown out there, I'm moving on, I'm leaving you behind. You can't even cross the street because you are distracted by what you are sure are deep questions you've asked yourself. I don't have the time for that. [Note to the reader: I, like Neil, live and work in Manhattan, and I can assure you that I am quite adept at crossing the perilous streets of the metropolis.] interviewer [not one to put too fine a point on things, apparently]: I also felt that it was a fat load of crap, as one could define what crap is and the essential qualities that make up crap: how you grade a philosophy paper? [5] dGT [laughing]: Of course I think we all agree you turned out okay. interviewer: Philosophy was a good Major for comedy, I think, because it does get you to ask a lot of ridiculous questions about things. dGT: No, you need people to laugh at your ridiculous questions. interviewers: It's a bottomless pit. It just becomes nihilism. dGT: nihilism is a kind of philosophy

In response, Pigliucci (who produces the excellent Rationally Speaking podcast) put together several bulleted points to counter what he sees are some fairly serious misconceptions about philosophy. Here are two noteable points:

You and a number of your colleagues keep asking what philosophy (of science, in particular) has done for science, lately. There are two answers here: first, much philosophy of science is simply not concerned with advancing science, which means that it is a category mistake (a useful philosophical concept) to ask why it didn't. The main objective of philosophy of science is to understand how science works and, when it fails to work (which it does, occasionally), why this was the case. It is epistemology applied to the scientific enterprise. And philosophy is not the only discipline that engages in studying the workings of science: so do history and sociology of science, and yet I never heard you dismiss those fields on the grounds that they haven't discovered the Higgs boson. Second, I suggest you actually look up some technical papers in philosophy of science to see how a number of philosophers, scientists and mathematicians actually do collaborate to elucidate the conceptual and theoretical aspects of research on everything from evolutionary theory and species concepts to interpretations of quantum mechanics and the structure of superstring theory. Those papers, I maintain, do constitute a positive contribution of philosophy to the progress of science — at least if by science you mean an enterprise deeply rooted in the articulation of theory and its relationship with empirical evidence. A common refrain I've heard from you...and others, is that scientific progress cannot be achieved by "mere armchair speculation." And yet we give a whole category of Nobels to theoretical physicists, who use the deductive power of mathematics (yes, of course, informed by previously available empirical evidence) to do just that. Or — even better — take mathematics itself, a splendid example of how having one's butt firmly planted on a chair (and nowhere near any laboratory) produces both interesting intellectual artifacts in their own right and an immense amount of very practical aid to science. No, I'm not saying that philosophy is just like mathematics or theoretical physics. I'm saying that one needs to do better than dismiss a field of inquiry on the grounds that it is not wedded to a laboratory setting, or that its practitioners like comfortable chairs.


There's much more at Scientia Salon, including NdGT's response to Pigliucci.

You may also enjoy:

Why Physicists Need Philosophers There's a spat brewing between some theoretical physicists and philosophers of science recently,… Read more