Physicist Richard Feynman is said to remarked that Philosophers of science are about as useful to scientists as ornithologists are to birds. Senior lecturer in philosophy, Roman Frigg, gives his riposte in this short film...
Scientists produce the technologies that characterise modern life and their theories help us to understand how the world works they are transparently useful. But why do we need philosophers of science?
In this short film Dr Roman Frigg, a former theoretical physicist who is now senior lecturer in the Department of Philosophy, Logic and Scientific Method, argues that all science is the result of a particular philosophical attitude. One of the tasks of philosophers of science is to analyse science in light of these attitudes.
Philosophers can also feed back into science and Dr Frigg points to a project at LSE which looks at climate models as a good example of this. Climate scientists and philosophers are working together to tackle difficult conceptual problems such as the use of probability and the kind of forecasts you make to come up with more informed climate models.
