It's definitely sage. But the sagacity doesn't hinge on the word "science", it hinges on the word _useful_. Science is often thought to be a body of knowledge. But there's a huge swath of people, me included, who think science is not knowledge, but a method/behavior for formulating and testing hypotheses. It's not clear to me that Feynman actually said this. But Feynman is a good candidate because he cared far more about what you _do_ than what you claim to _know_.
Philosophy (of anything) can be useful. But to any working scientist, it is far less useful than, say, glass blowing, programming, or cell sorting. And if you think distinguishing between the usefulness of beakers from the usefulness of ... oh, let's say Popper's 3 worlds, then your expression says more about you than it does about them. On 09/20/2017 08:27 PM, Nick Thompson wrote: > By the way, the Feynman quote is really dumb, and it’s annoying that people > keep trotting it out as if it was sage. The reason birds can’t make use of > ornithology is they can’t read. Think how useful it would be for a cuckoo > host to be able to spend a few hours reading a text on egg identification. > Is the reason physicists can’t make use of philosophy of science that they > can’t think? I doubt anyone who cites this “aphorism” would come to that > conclusion. Bad metaphor. -- ☣ gⅼеɳ ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ by Dr. Strangelove
