Where Philosophy of Science is of practical use

There was a somewhat acrimonious debate in another thread, about a year or so ago, on whether practicing scientists would benefit from a grounding in philosophy of science. I personally would return a verdict of "case not proved" in that particular debate, but the other day, I came across an example where the affirmative proposition seems to be illustrated.

I tutor kids in maths and science, and I was helping a bright 12-year-old who is hoping to get a scholarship to a very good British private school.

The scholarship examinations are designed to test your ability to think, not your previous knowledge.

We had a past examination to look at, and one part of it consisted of the following: a one-page description of the concept of Specific Heat Capacity (something not studied until students here are 16 or 17, usually), and then some simple questions involving plugging values into the basic SHC equation. It would not have been difficult for a bright kid (and was not for my tutee), except for one question, the final one:

"How do we know that the energy lost by the molecules in an exothermic reaction is gained by the surrounding environment?"

I thought about that one ... I suppose the answer the examiner wanted was a repetition of the concept of the conservation of energy, but, if that was the case, the question should have been something like, "What is the physical principle which tells us that the energy lost by the molecules in an exothermic reaction ..." etc.

Or, for something less rote, ... "How could we test the proposition that the energy lost by ..."

Or, "Why do we believe that the energy lost ..."

But the actual question ... "How do we know that the energy lost ..." etc. is, in my opinion, exactly the kind of thing that a bright, inquiring 12-year old is likely to stumble on, since it seems to me to engage some very deep issues, of the sort philosophers of science think about.

I doubt that is what the examiner wanted (it was only a one-mark question), and the inclusion of such a question worded in this way betrays, I think, a lack of familiarity with the question of the status of science and the philosophical questions raised by scientific laws.

I have seen similar questions in the official science exams students have to sit at 16 here -- questions that want as an answer, some rote-response which cites a relevant scientific law, but phrased in a naive way which ought to cause trouble to someone who actually thinks about these things.

So, I suggest that whereas the usefulness of Philosophy of Science to practicing scientists is not proven, its usefulness to teachers of science, insofar as they are also teachers of critical inquiry, might be very great indeed.

This is an interesting case that probably goes beyond POS to philosophy in general. Your three interpretations of the question go to the heart of knowledge as being "justified true belief"... why do we believe it (conservation of energy), how do we justify it (open vs. closed systems) and can we demonstrate the truth of it?
Einstein, known as a physicist rather than as a philosopher of science, sent Solovine a hand-drawn schematic of science, reproduced in Imagery in Scientific Thought, showing 3 levels of resonance:
(1) the system of axioms
(2) deduced laws, and
(3) the totality of sense experiences (which I'd interpret as experimental findings)
As a former laboratory hack and now theoretician I reckon this is a more realistic view of science than Popper's idea of simple conjecture and falsification.

Someone -- ideally an academic in this field who could use another Publication -- ought to write a book aimed at science teachers, setting out these issues.

I think the readership could go beyond science teachers, Doug. Teaching college kids how to research online often comes down to selecting the "right" words, I find. The results can change by factors of hundreds. And the words people use when they're communicating scitech issues in popular journalism seem to go a long way toward colouring how they're received, climate change debate being a case in point, especially when it is regarded as a political issue. The hows and whys of causation, dependence, and necessary and sufficient conditions for a relationship or an event can be asked (and explained) so vaguely that there has to be a better way.
Maybe falling back on J.S.Mill's canons of scientific method isn't a universal panacea but it might help.

I find thinking about the philosophy of science quite useful, as long as the philosophers know something about science. That is not always the case. When I was at Oxford U, we had a budding science philosopher observe a colleague of mine while he was 'doing science'. After a week or so, he told my colleague that he was amazed how 'stable' science is and how 'connected' it is. Apparently, he had been taught that science is some fragmented exercise of the imagination, frequently interrupted by Kuhnian revolutions.

That kind of philosophy of science I find quite useless. However, as Doug pointed out, thinking about what we actually mean when we say things like 'we know that' etc, is useful for making us aware that many of the things we take for granted deserve special consideration. I find this especially useful in intro physics courses (the graduate students usually have already accepted that science works), where I spend a lot of time talking about how and why science works.

I have found a particular analogy useful: Science is like a giant crossword-puzzle: We have hints from Nature and in the end all the rows and colums must fit together. We are all working on different parts of the puzzle and sometimes we get it wrong. How we fill in the blanks doesn't really matter (hypothesis testing, intuition, observation, dumb luck), as long as it fits both the hints (Nature) and the overall structure.

This analogy is from Defending Science, a really good modern overview of science philosophy, and a thorough debunking of postmodern nonsense.

Thanks for putting me onto Susan Haack. I just received a couple of her books and look forward to reading them. I'm also looking forward to the new Mats Bergman title on pragmatism in scitech communication, due for release tomorrow. Can you recommend any other authors?

By the way, I was talking to a student today about pragmatic and constructionist approaches to theory (without the jargon) when he opined that the right approach could "make writing a history essay as good as ...(pause)... a bowl of chips". French fries, that is.

I'm interested in structured approaches to establishing confidence in scientific models (and software simulations supporting them).

Standard engineering approaches generally rely on comparison with the real system being modelled. If that system doesn't exist yet, or we would rather it never existed, then that makes it difficult.

Are there any POS books that anyone would like to recommend that might help me get a few ideas in this area?

LibraryThing needs the facility to send emails to subscribers to a Group when a thread has been updated or initiated. I have just looked at this one after an absence of five months to find a good discussion that ran into the sand because, I assume, all the people who were posting here a couple of years ago have assumed the Group is moribund.

Graffotti: Your question is very relevant in light of the Climate Change issue.

The most valuable contributions that Philosophy of Science can make are not, I think, to the hands-on practice of science, the actual confrontation of ideas with reality. At that point, I think the full ingenuity of the scientist gets brought to bear on the puzzle at hand, and any kind of reflective distance is not very helpful.

But how should this raw wrestling match best be managed? Which people and projects should be funded? Which papers should be published? What sort of self-declared "scientific" testimony should be considered legally authoritative? Which theories should be trusted enough to be incorporated into daily practice outside the laboratory - in industry, in medicine, etc.? With these questions, the reflective distance provided by philosophy of science seems quite useful. The passion required for immediate engagement looks more like bias in these contexts.

A post to keep this thread from going dormant.

I had written a much longer post but LT went down and it got lost in the process. I rarely swear but, if my PC had speech recognition, it would have definitely objected.

I'll be on vacation for 3 weeks and unless I have access to a computer, it will be probably 3 weeks until I participate in this very interesting, and sometimes erudite, thread.

Bookmonk: We're waiting!

Regarding your second paragraph: I find that contributing to LibraryThing threads is a good test of one's eternal optimism: I have had your experience several times (and the contribution which vanishes is usually, or so I think, not reproducable in all its original eloquence.) I always vow to write my future longer essay-contributions off line and then submit them. But I never do. I now understand why people whose homes have been destroyed by an active volcano return and rebuild, again and again.