“Philosophy of science is as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds.”
Richard Feynman may or may not have said this. We are not quite sure. In any case, his alleged claim is not quite correct. Ornithology actually would be quite useful to birds if they could only understand it. Ornithologist Carl Bergstrom agrees, and he clearly is an authority on the subject.
In this Bergstromian spirit, my approach to the problem of life, the universe, and everything attempts to be as rigorously scientific as possible, while also being informed, supported, and grounded by the best philosophy available today. We could call this approach, which intimately intertwines philosophy and science, natural philosophy. But maybe this is confusing, since that name is already taken. “Natural philosophy” is what science used to be called before it narrowed its vision to treat everything as a mechanism, to look upon the world (and everything in it) as if it were a machine. Call me old-fashioned, but we urgently need to rediscover some of that ancient philosophical spirit, transgressing academic boundaries, fighting intellectual fragmentation. Research will be all the richer for it.
That is what I want to be: a natural philosopher. That’s why I’ve written this appendix: to write a word or two about the general philosophical framing of what I’m writing about in the main part of the book. It only seems appropriate, considering that my entire argument pivots around the question of how to best frame our knowledge of the world. This appendix is a bit more philosophical than the rest of the book. You’ve been warned. Feel free to skip it if you are not into that kind of thing.
Naturalism
Words can be perplexing. I’ve just talked about wanting to be a natural philosopher. This has nothing to do with birds, or nature documentaries. (Alas!) That is natural history. The argument that I present is purely theoretical. What’s more, natural philosophy is also not exactly the same as naturalism or, more precisely, the new naturalist philosophy of science and naturalist epistemology — the kind of philosophy that I use to support and contextualise my science. It’s a bit complicated, and the differences are quite nuanced. Let’s unpack this, and see how natural philosophy and naturalism actually go hand in hand.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, naturalism is the philosophical doctrine that “relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural.” As a consequence, naturalism posits that all knowledge of the world falls within the domain of scientific investigation. This can be interpreted in two quite different ways. To me, it does not mean that science covers everything, and that science will eventually replace philosophy (and all other ways of generating knowledge). That is not naturalism but scientism, of which I am not a fan. Scientism is the kind of pseudo-philosophy that contemporary popularizers of science often promote. You know, “philosophy is dead,” and suchlike self-contradictory public proclamations. As a natural philosopher, I want absolutely nothing to do with this preposterous nonsense.
Instead, I take the following (much more reasonable) position: “naturalism” means that the way we generate knowledge itself should be subject to empirical study. Rather than science replacing philosophy, this means we can do philosophy empirically! In fact, from a historical point of view, science is nothing but formally or empirically applied philosophy. In the end, there is no strict boundary between philosophy and science. They are the flipsides of the same coin: the process of gaining robust and trustworthy knowledge of the world. At least, that is the sense of “naturalism” and “naturalist philosophy” that I support and use in my own work: philosophy that is grounded in the natural world.
Let me be more specific. The new naturalism I mention above is a movement in contemporary philosophy that comes with its own theory of knowledge (an epistemology), and its own philosophical view of science, which provides an account of what scientific research is, how it can be philosophically justified, and how it is (or ought to be) done to generate trustworthy knowledge of the world. It positions itself as an alternative to the philosophical doctrine of foundationalism. For the sake of brevity, I’ll only say that foundationalist philosophy attempts to establish the nature of science and knowledge based on abstract first principles. For instance, a foundationalist epistemology would declare that knowledge is “justified true belief” (as Plato did in his "Theaetetus") upon which two thousand years of debate ensued, finished by a two-page argument that came up with two (rather contrived but logically convincing) examples of “justified true belief” that is not knowledge. Boom! Plato vanquished. This, quite simply, is why most practically-minded researchers hate philosophy. And who are we to hold it against them?
The good news is that naturalist philosophy is exactly not like that. Quite the opposite. It is a philosophy that wants to be practical and useful, not only to philosophers, but also to researchers. Naturalism is a philosophy that matters in the real world, evolves in an adaptive manner, and does not get stuck in endless foundationalist debates about definitions. Here are the criteria that characterise this philosophy:
In summary: what I am doing here is not just science, and not just philosophy, it is natural philosophy, science and philosophy at the same time. To be a natural philosopher in these times means to take the approach of naturalism, to combine philosophy and science in a way that is practically useful, tightly integrated, and mutually reinforcing. That’s the spirit! It’s a real pity so few people do this nowadays.
Richard Feynman may or may not have said this. We are not quite sure. In any case, his alleged claim is not quite correct. Ornithology actually would be quite useful to birds if they could only understand it. Ornithologist Carl Bergstrom agrees, and he clearly is an authority on the subject.
In this Bergstromian spirit, my approach to the problem of life, the universe, and everything attempts to be as rigorously scientific as possible, while also being informed, supported, and grounded by the best philosophy available today. We could call this approach, which intimately intertwines philosophy and science, natural philosophy. But maybe this is confusing, since that name is already taken. “Natural philosophy” is what science used to be called before it narrowed its vision to treat everything as a mechanism, to look upon the world (and everything in it) as if it were a machine. Call me old-fashioned, but we urgently need to rediscover some of that ancient philosophical spirit, transgressing academic boundaries, fighting intellectual fragmentation. Research will be all the richer for it.
That is what I want to be: a natural philosopher. That’s why I’ve written this appendix: to write a word or two about the general philosophical framing of what I’m writing about in the main part of the book. It only seems appropriate, considering that my entire argument pivots around the question of how to best frame our knowledge of the world. This appendix is a bit more philosophical than the rest of the book. You’ve been warned. Feel free to skip it if you are not into that kind of thing.
Naturalism
Words can be perplexing. I’ve just talked about wanting to be a natural philosopher. This has nothing to do with birds, or nature documentaries. (Alas!) That is natural history. The argument that I present is purely theoretical. What’s more, natural philosophy is also not exactly the same as naturalism or, more precisely, the new naturalist philosophy of science and naturalist epistemology — the kind of philosophy that I use to support and contextualise my science. It’s a bit complicated, and the differences are quite nuanced. Let’s unpack this, and see how natural philosophy and naturalism actually go hand in hand.
According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, naturalism is the philosophical doctrine that “relates scientific method to philosophy by affirming that all beings and events in the universe (whatever their inherent character may be) are natural.” As a consequence, naturalism posits that all knowledge of the world falls within the domain of scientific investigation. This can be interpreted in two quite different ways. To me, it does not mean that science covers everything, and that science will eventually replace philosophy (and all other ways of generating knowledge). That is not naturalism but scientism, of which I am not a fan. Scientism is the kind of pseudo-philosophy that contemporary popularizers of science often promote. You know, “philosophy is dead,” and suchlike self-contradictory public proclamations. As a natural philosopher, I want absolutely nothing to do with this preposterous nonsense.
Instead, I take the following (much more reasonable) position: “naturalism” means that the way we generate knowledge itself should be subject to empirical study. Rather than science replacing philosophy, this means we can do philosophy empirically! In fact, from a historical point of view, science is nothing but formally or empirically applied philosophy. In the end, there is no strict boundary between philosophy and science. They are the flipsides of the same coin: the process of gaining robust and trustworthy knowledge of the world. At least, that is the sense of “naturalism” and “naturalist philosophy” that I support and use in my own work: philosophy that is grounded in the natural world.
Let me be more specific. The new naturalism I mention above is a movement in contemporary philosophy that comes with its own theory of knowledge (an epistemology), and its own philosophical view of science, which provides an account of what scientific research is, how it can be philosophically justified, and how it is (or ought to be) done to generate trustworthy knowledge of the world. It positions itself as an alternative to the philosophical doctrine of foundationalism. For the sake of brevity, I’ll only say that foundationalist philosophy attempts to establish the nature of science and knowledge based on abstract first principles. For instance, a foundationalist epistemology would declare that knowledge is “justified true belief” (as Plato did in his "Theaetetus") upon which two thousand years of debate ensued, finished by a two-page argument that came up with two (rather contrived but logically convincing) examples of “justified true belief” that is not knowledge. Boom! Plato vanquished. This, quite simply, is why most practically-minded researchers hate philosophy. And who are we to hold it against them?
The good news is that naturalist philosophy is exactly not like that. Quite the opposite. It is a philosophy that wants to be practical and useful, not only to philosophers, but also to researchers. Naturalism is a philosophy that matters in the real world, evolves in an adaptive manner, and does not get stuck in endless foundationalist debates about definitions. Here are the criteria that characterise this philosophy:
- Perspectivism: naturalist philosophy begins by acknowledging the limited nature of human beings. We are not as great or smart as we think we are, and we’d better pay close attention to our various physical, physiological, cognitive, socio-cultural, and technological peculiarities, flaws, and shortcomings. Unlike foundationalist philosophy, naturalism avoids abstract and idealised “what-if” scenarios, where we imagine to achieve perfect knowledge of some world “out there.” Such scenarios never tell us anything about how actual humans come to know the world. In fact, most of the time they are outright misleading. To avoid being misled, naturalism embraces the insight that there is no “view from nowhere:” all we will ever know about the world, we will know from our own, imperfect and human, perspective. This is why naturalism is a kind of perspectivism.
- Empiricism: naturalist philosophy relies heavily on our interactions with the world (as limited beings) as the primary and ultimate source of knowledge. If it is not based on experience (your own direct experience, or that of your ancestors or other members of your society), it cannot be the foundation of your philosophy. For example, we cannot ground our theory of knowledge (our epistemology) in immutable and universal abstract principles (like “knowledge is justified true belief”), or in purely theoretical analyses of language and logic. Nor can we base it on our current fundamental laws of physics, for that matter. All of these are human constructs after all, unfinished works in progress that depend on our epistemology (not only the other way around). Alfred North Whitehead (in 1925) called the act of mistaking the abstract for the real the fallacy of misplaced concreteness. Naturalism tries to avoid such reification of abstract concepts and ideas as much as it possibly can. Therefore, it is a kind of (quite radical) empiricism.
- Pragmatism: as a direct consequence, naturalist philosophy pays close attention to the (often messy) practice of doing research. It is interested in learning how researchers actually gain insights, how they actually solve problems in their complex cognitive, social, and physical context, given the numerous constraints they have to work under. It does not postulate any simplified abstract theories of how researchers ought to do research in an ideal world. However, and this is important: naturalism does not merely stand back to observe and describe what scientists are doing (like the kind of ornithology that is, arguably, really not very useful to birds). Instead, naturalist philosophy aims to actively support and improve the way researchers tackle their practical and theoretical problems by understanding the nature of these problems, and the problem-solving strategies researchers apply to them. Because of this emphasis on problem-solving as a central part of research, naturalism is a kind of pragmatism.
- Constructivism and realism: based on its focus on practice, naturalist philosophy treats all (scientific and philosophical) knowledge as a human construct, historically contingent and dependent on social conditions (at least to some extent). In other words, knowledge is built, not simply received, revealed, or extracted from the world. Even mathematical objects and theories are constructed, not just passively discovered. As human beings, we impose our way of thinking, our unavoidably idiosyncratic notions and models, on the world. Yet, there is good news: this building process is not arbitrary. It is firmly grounded in the simple fact that our existence is not isolated. We are part of the world, firmly embedded in our environment. We encounter reality at every moment of our life, not least in the form of problems that it keeps throwing at us. It is when we try to solve these problems in a robust and consistent manner that we discover patterns that can lead to a more systematic description of the structure of reality. This is the ultimate aim of research (as Aristotle correctly recognized). In this sense, naturalist philosophy combines realism about the world with constructivism about how we come to know it. It manages to have its cake and eat it.
- Fallibilist, yet meliorative: naturalist philosophy recognizes the fallibility of all (scientific and philosophical) knowledge. But it avoids any fashionably postmodern lapse into radical relativism. It may be true that no knowledge can ever be absolute or complete. It may be the case that we can have no 100% certainty about anything (even though we cannot be 100% certain about that either). But knowledge is not mere social discourse, and not all kinds of knowledge are equivalent when it comes to connecting to the real world. There are ways to gain relatively robust and trustworthy knowledge of the world. We can build knowledge that is better in this sense than other knowledge — better than our previous theories, for example, or knowledge obtained by non-scientific means, like falling for the current fad of mindfulness meditation, engaging with poetry, or hugging a tree (all very worthwhile activities, by the way, in their own context). Therefore, natural philosophy is fallibilist (no certain knowledge) but also meliorative (believing it is possible to gain better, even if not perfect, knowledge of the world over time).
- Process philosophy: the core aspect of gaining better knowledge is that naturalist philosophy must be consistent with our most up-to-date scientific insights. Naturalism aims to understand and to learn from cutting-edge scientific theory and research practice, without completely deferring to it. We shall not posit ideas that fly in the face of empirical evidence (and the scientific theories based on it). Naturalism is not armchair philosophy, the kind that simply does not care what scientists are doing or saying (still surprisingly common, unfortunately: read any randomly selected paper on the philosophy of mind and you will see what I mean…). Yet, neither does naturalism simply accept what scientists take for granted. Instead, it aims to actively contribute to scientific practice, to deliberate with researchers about the best ways of doing research, and to shed light on current scientific controversies. The basic idea is that naturalist philosophy and science coevolve. They make each other better over time, through a dialectical process of evolutionary coadaptation. In this sense, naturalism is firmly committed to process thinking.
- Deliberation: naturalistic philosophy seeks to engage with science, but not in a condescending manner. Science and philosophy work at the same level. They are equals that need each other. Yet, they often have different questions, objectives, and methodologies, which do not always perfectly synergise or complement each other. This is fine. The point is not that we, as philosophers and scientists, have to agree with each other all the time. In fact, premature consensus can be really bad in situations where matters are not settled, which happens very often in cutting-edge research or philosophical debate, because our theories about the world always remain underdetermined by empirical evidence. There is room for interpretation. But this does not mean that anything goes. Naturalism includes a kind of pluralism that is engaged, not flabby. Pluralistic perspectives are not needed, unless they are properly justified. Naturalism despises whateverism: surely it can’t be true that everybody is entitled to their own opinion when it comes to producing trustworthy knowledge. Yet, a plurality of well-argued perspectives enables progress in science through deliberation, a form of discussion that acknowledges differences in position, and uses exactly those differences to move forward towards finding new solutions and insights.
- Nothing really ends: this coevolutionary process of deliberation between philosophy and science never ceases. Naturalist philosophy never claims to have ultimate answers, nor does it even attempt to provide a universal account of knowledge production. No one solution will ever fit all situations, and there is an inexhaustible fount of possible discoveries, generated through our ever-evolving encounters with the world. The adaptivity of our philosophy and scientific knowledge depends radically on context, and this context changes constantly over time. What made sense a hundred or a thousand years ago may no longer be relevant today. And yet, one account of the world can be better than another in a particular situation. I will defend the point here that naturalism is better than more old-fashioned views of looking at knowledge and science. But I certainly won’t claim it is the best way, once and for all! There is no optimal or ever-lasting solution to all problems. What we can hope to achieve, however, is the best possible account of research and knowledge in this world, this society, this present moment in time.
In summary: what I am doing here is not just science, and not just philosophy, it is natural philosophy, science and philosophy at the same time. To be a natural philosopher in these times means to take the approach of naturalism, to combine philosophy and science in a way that is practically useful, tightly integrated, and mutually reinforcing. That’s the spirit! It’s a real pity so few people do this nowadays.
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The authors acknowledge funding from the John Templeton Foundation (Project ID: 62581), and would like to thank the co-leader of the project, Prof. Tarja Knuuttila, and the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vienna for hosting the project of which this book is a central part.
Disclaimer: everything we write and present here is our own responsibility. All mistakes are ours, and not the funders’ or our hosts’ and collaborators'.
Disclaimer: everything we write and present here is our own responsibility. All mistakes are ours, and not the funders’ or our hosts’ and collaborators'.
