Intellectual Impostures by Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont

Author:Alan Sokal & Jean Bricmont [Sokal, Alan & Bricmont, Jean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1861976313
Publisher: Profile Books
Published: 2003-06-15T04:00:00+00:00

5. The traditional philosophical and literary training

We have no desire to criticize this training as such; indeed, it is probably adequate for the goals it pursues. Nevertheless, it may be a handicap when one turns to scientific texts, for two reasons.

First of all, the author or the literality of the text have, in literature or even in philosophy, a relevance they do not have in science. One can learn physics without ever reading Galileo, Newton or Einstein, and study biology without reading a line of Darwin.260 What matters are the factual and theoretical arguments these authors offer, not the words they used. Besides, their ideas may have been radically modified or even overturned by subsequent developments in their disciplines. Furthermore, scientists’ personal qualities and extra-scientific beliefs are irrelevant to the evaluation of their theories. Newton’s mysticism and alchemy, for example, are important for the history of science and more generally for the history of human thought, but not for physics.

The second problem comes from the privilege granted to theories over experiments (which is related to the privilege granted to texts over facts). The link between a scientific theory and its experimental test is often extremely complex and indirect. Therefore, a philosopher will tend to approach the sciences preferentially through their conceptual aspect (so do we, in fact). But the whole problem comes precisely from the fact that, if one does not also take into account the empirical aspects, then scientific discourse indeed becomes nothing more than a ‘myth’ or ‘narration’ among many others.

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