Why philosophers should publish in science journals

Comments (18)

1. Unfortunately, many of the humanities tend to hate (us) scientists. We try to bridge the gap, sometimes: fractals (a type of art, I suppose but more complex mathematical algorithms), Markov chains (systematics and logistics, I suppose, but more math), Game Theory (some psychologists say it belongs to them but there’s more mathematics involved them meets the eye), DNA structural analysis (the beauty of the double helix is unique and unparalleled), etc.
   No offense intented and I ask for much forgiveness if I cause any in saying so, but we use applied science and applied mathematics, but many humanities experts tend to not apply as much, I suppose.
   C.P. Snow spoke of the two cultures: science on the one hand, humanities on the other; “never the twain shall meet”.
   But everything is numbers, and everything is science.
   Perhaps the gap will be bridged.

2. By the way, Sir, your work is fascinating!

   1. I refer to the work published in Zootaxa.

      1. I only saw the preview of the paper, though.

3. Hey, well done! 🙂 *hand-back-clap-pat-thing*

   1. *bows*

4. I’m constantly reminded that scientists shouldn’t meddle in philosophy because we don’t understand Plato and Aristotle (among others).

   Why is it that philosophers can write about science and get away with making stupid comments about a subject they don’t understand? I’m thinking of Daniel Dennett and Michael Ruse, not John Wilkins.

   John, are their any scientists whose philosophical opinions you respect and who could publish in philosophy journals? (Although why they would want to is another matter.)

   1. Tell me, Larry, are there scientists whose forays into philosophy you respect? For there are a lot of them.

      Any philosopher I name will be immediately subjected to scrutiny for purity according to the critic. I respect a great many philosophers of science, but, like scientists themselves, they can err in matters of fact.

   2. I for one would be happy to have more scientists meddle in philosophy, although there’s a separate question as to whether or why they might want to.

      There are biologists who I think most philosophers of science would agree are philosophically sophisticated such as Richard Lewontin (and he has published in philosophy of science journals). I’m sure John has his own examples.

      A more interesting question (on which John is better suited than I am to discuss), concerns the history of prominent philosophy of science journals such as Philosophy of Science. In its early days (1930s), scientists were very active in publishing in it (Fisher published in the first issue, I believe). I suppose the further specialization of academic fields has lead to fewer scientists publishing in such journals, in part because the issues the philosophers of science are discussing become more narrow, and more secondary.

      On the subject of John’s original post – it is shocking how slow philosophy journals are compared to the sciences. Maybe it is a result of a combination of historical accident and the fact that in philosophy the standards of what constitutes good work are much less well agreed upon. I’m not sure why that would explain it, but that is one striking difference between the sciences and the humanities. It also is correlated to a large extent with acceptance rates, which tend to be lower in Humanities than in sciences (because the scientists themselves have a clearer sense of whether the paper they send to a given journal is publishable). I’m just speculating, though.

5. That just shows you that you should jump ship and try to infiltrate a biology department. I hope someone can lend you a gilson, to make you look the part.

   1. As it happens, that is exactly what I am trying to do. Well, biology and earth sciences.

6. This is a very nice summary article – something everyone should read.

7. Tell me, Larry, are there scientists whose forays into philosophy you respect? For there are a lot of them.

   I’m not in any position to judge since the only field of philosophy I know anything about is philosophy of science (epistemology). Nobody in that field blows my socks off. There are a lot of scientists who talk about religion and morality (Richard Dawkins, Francis Collins, Ken Miller, Michael Behe, Sam Harris) but I don’t think those topics belong exclusively to the domain of philosophy.

   1. Sam Harris is a scientist? Could you perhaps define a little more clearly what a scientist is, and what separates one from being a philosopher, then? Is a scientists someone who says things that are scientific (and only things that are scientific)?

      Many of the philosophers of science of the current crop were trained as scientists. Actually, so were many of the previous crop.

      1. Sam Harris is a scientist insofar as anyone who has done peer-reviewed research in a scientific field, had that research published, and received a PhD in part for doing such research.

8. Philosophical treatises published as cell phone apps? This could be a breakthrough in bringing philosophy to the masses – sort of an ep-iPhone-omenon.

   [Exeunt pursued by a silverback]

   1. What are you? Some kind of dialist?

9. John wonders:

   Why can’t the humanities work like this?

   Is it perhaps something as trifling as the nature of the content? In a humanities argument, the article is its own content, it stands and falls by carefully constructed arguments. So the form is important, the arguments must be carefully and consistently framed.

   In science, the subject matter is communicated by academic papers. In the philosophy, the subject matter is academic papers.

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