A few days back Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the most beloved science educator of our time, said some unfortunate things about philosophy. My first inclination was to try to see his point, since I’m a big fan, and also I’m not at all opposed to critiquing philosophy – especially academic philosophy. But, he wasn’t just critiquing the discipline as an institution, he was actively discouraging people doing philosophical activity. He’s not the first thinker to do this, but let’s be honest – Wittgenstein did it better.
Here’s what Tyson has to say on the matter, as analyzed by Damon Linker at The Week:
But now it’s been definitively demonstrated by a recent interview in which Tyson sweepingly dismisses the entire history of philosophy. Actually, he doesn’t just dismiss it. He goes much further — to argue that undergraduates should actively avoid studying philosophy at all. Because, apparently, asking too many questions “can really mess you up.”
Yes, he really did say that. Go ahead, listen for yourself, beginning at 20:19 — and behold the spectacle of an otherwise intelligent man and gifted teacher sounding every bit as anti-intellectual as a corporate middle manager or used-car salesman. He proudly proclaims his irritation with “asking deep questions” that lead to a “pointless delay in your progress” in tackling “this whole big world of unknowns out there.” When a scientist encounters someone inclined to think philosophically, his response should be to say, “I’m moving on, I’m leaving you behind, and you can’t even cross the street because you’re distracted by deep questions you’ve asked of yourself. I don’t have time for that.”
I get that it’s good to be pragmatic and look where you’re going. On the other hand, we wouldn’t have astronomy or astrophysics if there weren’t people with their heads in the clouds, too busy looking up at the stars to look where they were going.
Take, for example, Thales, a pre-Socratic philosopher who was bold enough to reject the practical mentality of his time and look for answers to what seemed like unsolvable questions without relying on mythology. He was an astronomer who could predict an eclipse, and who could explain the solstice. He was the first to look for naturalistic answers, to develop rational mathematics, and yes, to get so lost in the stars that – as the legend goes – he didn’t see where he was stepping, and fell into a well.
Thales, the Greek father of scientific thinking, and a lover of philosophical questions, was too distracted by deep questions he’d asked of himself to cross the street. Scientific thinking exists because Thales had time for that, just like calculus exists because Leibniz had time for that, and the theory of relativity exists because Einstein had time for that. Newton had time for fussing with the definitions of words like “force”, “motion”, and “velocity” even though his peers only wanted to know why the planets orbited in an ellipse. But you can’t get to the idea without clear definitions of words and symbols.
If you just plug away at science experiments without ever looking up to question your epistemological paradigm, you’ll make a great lab assistant, but you’ll never break out of the limitation of present day knowledge. The problem with Tyson’s comments is that he’s advocating a strategy of moving forward, but has no plan for what to do if he hits a wall. His complaint is that contemporary philosophers haven’t made any contributions to scientific findings, but in making that complaint, he doesn’t seem to realize what philosophy is for – it’s not for answers. It’s for questions.
As Bertrand Russell tells it, our view on what philosophy is supposed to contribute is skewed. Every question starts as a philosophical question, but as soon as we answer it, we develop a new discipline. Answering a philosophical question renders it no longer philosophical, as we’ve seen again and again. Mathematics began as a practice of philosophy, and as soon as it gained traction, it split off into its own discipline. The same happened to music theory, to natural science, to theoretical physics, to psychology, to anthropology, to aesthetics, and more. Each of these disciplines is based on a few starting assumptions that came out of playing with philosophical questions until the pieces fell into place. In times of transition, these disciplines often turn back to philosophical theory for a reassessment of those starting assumptions.
Philosophy remains as a repository for not yet answered questions, and as a place to generate new ones. Perhaps right now we’re in a period of rest, merely guarding metaphysical questions and serving as a landing point for people seeking to question paradigmatic assumptions, but I think that we’re nearing a shift back to needing philosophy to be productive. Science and religion are locked in untenable combat, politics are growing ever more intersectional, people are starting to question the nature of critical thinking in educational models, and quantum mechanics is begging for a radically new engagement with logic and reason. You heard it here first – the time of the metalogician is coming.
Maybe philosophy doesn’t need to be for everyone, but we need to let it be for someone. If we don’t have someone questioning our tacit assumptions about knowledge, reality, and humanity, we’re operating blind and have no recourse to break free of them if it turns out they’re boxing us in. In short, if we want to move forward (whatever that means), we need Thales to get lost in the stars.
19 thoughts on “Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Thales of Miletus Fall Into a Well”
whitefrozen
I’m fairly impatient when it comes to scientists talking about things that are outside their area of expertise like this – to be perfectly blunt, Tyson, for all his work in astronomy and science popularization (I come from astronomy, so I genuinely appreciate that aspect of his work), has descended to the level of ‘ignorant tool’, much like Hawking and his grand pronouncements of the death of philosophy. The real problem, as I see it, is that once again, it appears that whenever a scientist speaks on any subject, by the mere fact of his being a scientist, his words are given an almost quasi-divine/oracle weight. However, to paraphrase John Lennox, nonsense remains nonsense, even if a really smart guy says it.
Philosophy is for everyone – everyone does it, the question is just whether or not one does it well, and Tyson and his ilk not only do philosophy, they do it embarrassingly badly. This is yet another instance of philosophy burying its undertaker, as a very wise man once said.
This is as much as I can say without getting any more irritated.
keithnoback
…And nobody knows nonsense like Lennox, its most intimate partner.
If the scientific project is in danger of losing its way, I think the philosophers are somewhat to blame. Their love of tidiness has led many of them to bury themselves in language, simply turning away from the lessons of the scientific project. Should we be surprised at the result? Tyson is just following their example.
Michelle Joelle
I mainly do history of philosophy, so I’ve kind of side-stepped the whole continental/analytic divide and would love if you could expand on what you mean by the love of “tidiness”. Logical positivism?
keithnoback
I’m in no way qualified to talk about the analytic/continental divide. Most of the time, I’m not sure where, when or what that really is.
Logical positivism is a great example, but I was actually thinking of Blackburn’s critique of Rorty. By tidiness, I mean a sort of underpants gnome approach to theorizing (the underpants gnomes from South Park, who steal underpants on the basis of the theory: Underpants – Something in the Middle – Profit. They’ve already made a determination about the inherent value of underpants.). It seems to me that there is a tendency in philosophy to make a determination about the nature of truth and then construct a hermetic theory around it. I guess I see that going on in all these, “who needs philosophy, we’ve got science” statements, too. If a person sees scientific understanding displacing philosophy wholesale, I think they are implying that there’s philosophical ground to be occupied.
Tyson has made statements like this before, but more along the lines of “astronomy is about astronomy” and the philosophically sound thing about science is that it doesn’t try to reach beyond its grasp. Those statements weren’t controversial. I think what bugs people about this one is the implication that astronomy maybe isn’t just about astronomy, but is part of a march toward some Big Truth. At least that’s what bugs me about it.
Michelle Joelle
Thank you for explaining – there’s something almost messianic about the way you describe it. I’ve got a sudden urge to go digging through some Benjamin. You’ve given me a lot to think about!
medievalotaku
Reblogged this on Medieval Otaku and commented:
Michelle points out the importance of studying philosphy with great cogency in this article. It is particularly shocking to read about any educated individual, in this case Neil DeGrasse Tyson, claim that philosophy is unnecessary.
Michelle Joelle
Thank you for the reblog!
Steve Morris
“He didn’t see where he was stepping, and fell into a well.”
Looks like Tyson has made the same mistake, lol.
Michelle Joelle
Heyo! Ha.
SelfAwarePatterns
“Every question starts as a philosophical question, but as soon as we answer it, we develop a new discipline. Answering a philosophical question renders it no longer philosophical, as we’ve seen again and again.”
Very well said.
Michelle Joelle
Thank you! I think that what philosophy produces is a set of approaches that you can take and run with until you find answers – basically, philosophy’s contribution can be thought of as the setting of questions, and the invention of new disciplines that can go find answers.
gaikokumaniakku
Neil deGrasse Tyson isn’t a scientist. He’s a celebrity who promotes science education. There is money to be made in selling science education, just like there is money to be made in selling soap flakes. That does not prove either product is made to a high standard of quality.
Also, have I shown you all my N dG T gif?
Michelle Joelle
I actually really like him as a science educator. I’m more philosophy educator than philosopher myself, so that part doesn’t bother me so much, but it does provide context. His bread and butter is presenting ideas and answers that have already been figured out, rather than engaging in the development and testing of new ideas and questions. So he can kind of get away with downplaying the whole “love of unattainable wisdom” portion while still being good at his job. It’s still surprising and wrongheaded, but I don’t think it takes away from the good work he does with scientific explanation.
PeterJ
Very nice Michelle. You avoided the trap of ridicule, which shows great restraint. Tyson is not a serious thinker, and would probably be offended if we called him one, but he does at least raise some interesting debates.
I cannot agree with you that philosophy is not about answers and all about questions, since if it has no answers then Tyson’s head-in-the-sand approach can be justified. At first glance I agreed with your comment, ‘the time of the metalogician is coming’, and found it very hopeful, but then I realised that these words might mean various different things and that I wasn’t sure which it was meant to be. If the time of the logician came it would be something.
Michelle Joelle
Thank you for your comments. I guess I just don’t think that answers are the only way to contribute to knowledge – just as failures often teach us more than success, questions can further our knowledge as much as (and sometimes more than) answers by eliminating things that block our thought processes and keep up on too narrow a path.
Although I suppose that I wasn’t expressly clear, in that some might see what I’m calling “not answers” as answers in themselves, as I’m distinguishing them from ways of understanding and organizing information.
And by “metalogician” I mean someone who studies how logical systems work, their starting assumptions, evaluating the limits and capacities of logic, etc.
PeterJ
Yes, I’m with you on this. After all, without the questions there would be no answers. I just react badly when somebody says that philosophy does not produce answers. Not everyone agrees about this. It’s more the case that some people say that they’ve found the answers, and all the rest don’t believe them.
Michelle Joelle
Well put.
Zachary Guinn
Just today I was thinking about questions, and how important they are. I’ve spent the past few months doing research for my application to Graduate School, where I came at the Euthyphro Dilemma from a variety of perspectives, linking it with the problem of abstract objects.
I’ve come to love problems. They come along and mess up everyone’s Status Quo. They shake things up, disturb us. They never really go away either. Three thousand years philosophers and theologians have been discussing the Euthyphro dilemma and similar ones. What grounds morality and if it is God how is that the case? Yet it’s still here and /still/ important.
Chesterton puts it wonderfully, “The riddle of life is simply this. For some mad reason in this mad world of ours, the things which men differ about most are exactly the things about which they must be got to agree. Men can agree on the fact that the earth goes round the sun. But then it does not matter a dump whether the earth goes around the sun or the Pleiades. But men cannot agree about morals: sex, property, individual rights, fixity and contracts, patriotism, suicide, public habits of health – these are exactly the things that men tend to fight about. And these are exactly the things that must be settled somehow on strict principles. Study each of them, and you will find each of them works back certainly to a philosophy, probably to a religion.” (alleged to Chesterton in “Evolution and Other Fairy Tales”, AuthorHouse, 2005, p. 470)
Without questions there would be no answers. (And I think with every answer their always comes more questions…)
Excellent post Michelle.
Michelle Joelle
Thank you for the kind and thorough comment. You can always rely on Chesterton to put a point on things, and I definitely agree with your love of problems and questions. Good luck with your applications – that sounds like a great writing sample, and could actually be the seeds of a lovely and rich dissertation!