The Science of Flipping Birds

I recently read a quote from physicist Richard Feynman: "Philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds." Feynman was a brilliant thinker, of this there can be little doubt. But with this particular quote, Feynman exposes an all too familiar naivety emerging from some of our brightest minds. Ornithology may not be of much use to birds, but birds don't drop atomic bombs. There isn't a middle finger buried in the science of ornithology capable of wiping out the planet, or conversely, a helpful set of thumbs developing MRI technology.

Of course it goes without saying, or at least it should go without saying, that a philosophy of science is what kept Feynman's research funded at all. It was that same philosophy of science that takes what he and others like him do and 'apply' (pun intended) it to the so-called real world. In other words, a fully funded philosophy of science was the teat from which he was 'granted' to drink, as well as the containers into which he spilled his milk. (Yes, granted was another intentional pun.) I say that it should go without saying, but obviously it doesn't or I wouldn't be saying it.

In one sense, Feynman's quote is spot on. You might recall from an earlier blog post, that I mentioned the last mandatory sterilization that occurred in America when I was in the seventh grade, and not a single scientific rule was violated in that process. It should be of no great surprise that a philosophy of science was no use to the actual mechanics of the procedure. Of course the same thing is true in the discovery of penicillin, or the manipulation of the stem cell. At a most rudimentary level of thinking, one could argue that the science itself happened in a proverbial vacuum.

The only problem with such base and archaic reasoning comes from the fact that human beings did the science. And we don't touch anything in this world without a working metaphysic, even if such a metaphysic is an act of primitive nominalism. Maybe I'll come back to that later in another post, but for now, it is sufficient enough to say that our ideological fingerprints emerge all over the science we do. Feynman is right in that these fingerprints have no bearing on the science itself, but it certainly was a force in both funding the laboratory and applying the results. Pharmaceutical science is beautiful for the entire time it's in the test tube, and both the economy and ethics of it are of no account. But to get it under the microscope in the first place required a series of steps that in no way correspond to the scientific method, and of course once it came out of the test tube, we begin in 'earnest' to attach a price tag to it. ("earnest" – three puns, going for a record).

Feynman's resistance to the philosophy of science displayed in this quote is a bit ironic, given his statements dredged up by Ian Hacking in the book, "The Social Construction of What?"

"Mathematically each of the three different formulations, Newton's law, the local field theory and the minimum principle, gives exactly the same consequences. What do we do then?

You will read in all the books that we cannot decide scientifically on one or the other. That is true. They are equivalent scientifically. It is impossible to make a decision, because there is no experimental way to distinguish between them if all the consequences are the same. But psychologically they are very different in two ways. First, philosophically you like them or do not like them; and training is the only way to beat that disease. Second, psychologically they are very different because they are completely un-equivalent when you are trying to guess new laws. Feynman, 1967." (Emphasis mine)

Here we see another potential problem embedded in the science itself. The way we choose to begin often determines the path we take to reach the end. Selling out to one could potentially determine the way you go after the next. This concept is explored a bit in my blog below on marginalization and the booger-ditch of psychological research. Without a philosophy of science, even under the microscope, we might potentially be choosing between two sets of methods, both of which work. With enough funding and application, we might be able to determine which works best, at least in any given moment, but that's unlikely since once a working way is found, the funding gets amplified it that direction. Still, there's no denying that reverse engineering on the stem cell (a mostly ideologically mandated move) did in fact lead to discoveries on a path that tinkering with the stem cell alone would most likely never have forged.

In this particular case, the scientist suckled from the teat of least resistance until he was all but forced to work the other breast by the notorious G.W. Bush executive order, steeped in ideological metaphysics. Now research continues on both nipples and if you read enough, you'll see the scientist takes his lips back and forth between them, trying not to accidentally spill anything on his metaphysical chin. And of course, we shouldn't forget the baby bottle waiting to catch a few drops of this genetic milk -- with a big WiCell sticker wrapped around it. After all, they hold the patent to the bulk of it anyway. They are the ones doling out the samples and stand to reap the first fruits of science applied rewards.

But we, the idle birds of reason, need not think on these things. There is no good reason to flip the birds, or turn the science. Ornithology doesn't matter to birds, even if through such a probing good, our wings will be mended, or sometimes clipped, as we fly across these lawns and man-made nests.