Episode 55 James Lennox, PhD Philosophy, on the Importance of Philosophy to Science and Education
May 20, 2021 ·
1h 35m 9s
In this episode, James Lennox, PhD Philosophy, joins us to discuss: -running and fitness -Dr. Lennox's academic background -why you should study science from a historical perspective -his study of...
show more
In this episode, James Lennox, PhD Philosophy, joins us to discuss:
-running and fitness
-Dr. Lennox's academic background
-why you should study science from a historical perspective
-his study of the history and philosophy of science
-the nature of science
-the nature of philosophy
-the dependence of science on philosophy
-specific examples, through history, of science and its dependence on philosophy
-recommendations for studying science
-why it all matters
About Jim: "James G. Lennox is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. His publications include Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals (Oxford 2001) and Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Essays on the Origins of Life Science (Cambridge 2001), and Aristotle on Inquiry: Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms (Cambridge 2021). He co-edited Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology (Pittsburgh 2013), Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory (Pittsburgh 2013), Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle (Cambridge 2010), Self-Motion from Aristotle to Newton (Princeton 1994), and Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge 1987). He is the author of “Aristotle and the Origins of Zoology” for The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 1. Lennox has held fellowships at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and at the University of Bologna’s Institute for Advanced Study. He is a founding member and currently co-secretary of the Ayn Rand Society, affiliated with the American Philosophical Association."
To support the show and help us grow our audience -- so we have more of an impact on education and the culture -- please help us with a donation:
1. https://www.patreon.com/reasonrxpodcast
2. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=SP6QPQKJU4XSS&source=url
Also, please consider liking us on your podcast app, and leaving a rational review.
And if you find an episode valuable, please share it with parents, teachers, school personnel, friends, and family. Help spread the word, help spread rational ideas for better living.
Contact Michael:
1. reasonrxpodcast@aol.com
2. http://www.goldams.com
3. https://www.facebook.com/EpistemeRx/
4. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
Show notes:
1. Books by Dr. Lennox (written, edited, or contributed)
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001HOQWT6
2. Works of Dr. Lennox
https://philpapers.org/s/James%20G.%20Lennox
3. Fitness
i. Movnat
a. https://www.movnat.com
b. https://www.youtube.com/user/MovNat
ii. Katy Bowman and Nutritious Movement
a. https://www.nutritiousmovement.com
b. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/move-your-dna-with-katy-bowman/id894200695
iii. Functional Movement Systems
a. https://www.functionalmovement.com
b. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movement-podcast/id1516334100
4. Bernd Heinrich
i. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17806876
ii. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17872721
5. E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: "Few [scientists] are philosophers. Most are intellectual journeyman, exploring locally, hoping for a strike, living for the present."
6. E. Bright Wilson, Professor Chemistry at Harvard, in An Introduction to Scientific Research: “Practical scientists who rashly allow themselves to listen to philosophers are likely to go away in a discouraged frame of mind, convinced that there is no logical foundation for the things they do, that all their alleged scientific laws are without justification, and that they are living in a world of naïve illusion. Of course, once they get out into the sunlight again, they know that this is not so, that scientific principles do work, bridges stay up, eclipses occur on schedule, and atomic bombs go off.
“Nevertheless, it is very unsatisfactory that no generally acceptable theory of scientific inference has yet been put forward. … Mistakes are often made which would presumably not have been made if a consistent and satisfactory basic philosophy had been followed.”
7. Isaac Newton’s Rules of Reasoning in Science:
“Rule 1 We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
“Rule 2 Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
“Rule 3. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
“Rule 4. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.”
8. Alexander Pope: “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/168406-nature-and-nature-s-laws-lay-hid-in-night-god-said
9. Galileo: "I should even think that in making the celestial material alterable, I contradict the doctrine of Aristotle much less than do those people who still want to keep the sky inalterable; for I am sure that he never took its inalterability to be as certain as the fact that all human reasoning must be placed second to direct experience."
From the Second Letter of Galileo Galilei to Mark Welser on Sunspots, p. 118 of Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake, (c) 1957 by Stillman Drake, published by Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, New York
10. Atle Naess, in his book Galileo Galilei – When the World Stood Still: “Galileo’s radical renewal sprang, nevertheless, from the Aristotelian mind set, as it was taught at the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano: human reason has a basic ability to recognize and understand the objects registered by the senses. The objects are real. They have properties that can be perceived, and then ‘further processed’ according to logical rules. These logical concepts are also real (if not in exactly the same way as the physical objects).”
11. Aristotle's book The Posterior Analytics
i. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/posterior.html
ii. https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Posterior-Analytics-Topica-Classical/dp/0674994302/
12. Archimedes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes
13. Apollonius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Perga
14. Ptolemy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy
15. John Herschel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Herschel
16. William Whewell
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whewell/
17. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
b. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/
c. https://iep.utm.edu/hegelsoc/
18. Immanuel Kant
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
b. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
c. philosophy of mind: https://iep.utm.edu/kantmind/
19. Plato's Republic
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)
b. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/
c. https://iep.utm.edu/republic/
20. Dr. Lennox's quoted translation of Aristotle in the Parts of Animals, Chapter 5, Book 1
https://goldams.com/aristotle-on-loving-biology/
21. Recommendations for physics laid out historically (but not for their philosophy of science):
i. Introductory Physics: An Historical Approach by Dr. Herbert Priestley
https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-physics-historical-approach-College/dp/B0000CK5V4/
ii. Notes of Dr. Michael Fowler
a. http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu
b. http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/home.html
iii. The astronomy section in Physics for the Inquiring Mind by Dr. Eric Rogers
a. https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Inquiring-Mind-Philosophy-Physical/dp/069108016X/
b. https://archive.org/details/PhysicsForTheInquiringMind-Rogers
c. http://self.gutenberg.org/wplbn0003099703-physics-for-the-enquiring-mind-by-eric-m-rogers.aspx
Other notes:
Daniel Robinson, in Lecture 12: Aristotle on the Knowable, The Great Ideas of Philosophy: “I have occasionally said to classes that if I had to single out any event as evidence of some civilization in a distant galaxy beyond the Milky Way, taking pity on us for the slow progress of the human imagination in dealing with its problems, the evidence might well be the life of Aristotle and his accomplishments. It's almost as if such a distant galactic neighbor might have said 'For goodness sake those human beings don't seem to be getting on with it at all. Aristotle, why don't you go down there and get things going?’ " (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Ideas-Philosophy-2nd/dp/B00DTO51JY)
Bio and image courtesy James Lennox.
show less
-running and fitness
-Dr. Lennox's academic background
-why you should study science from a historical perspective
-his study of the history and philosophy of science
-the nature of science
-the nature of philosophy
-the dependence of science on philosophy
-specific examples, through history, of science and its dependence on philosophy
-recommendations for studying science
-why it all matters
About Jim: "James G. Lennox is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh. His publications include Aristotle: On the Parts of Animals (Oxford 2001) and Aristotle’s Philosophy of Biology: Essays on the Origins of Life Science (Cambridge 2001), and Aristotle on Inquiry: Erotetic Frameworks and Domain-Specific Norms (Cambridge 2021). He co-edited Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology (Pittsburgh 2013), Metaethics, Egoism, and Virtue: Studies in Ayn Rand’s Normative Theory (Pittsburgh 2013), Being, Nature, and Life in Aristotle (Cambridge 2010), Self-Motion from Aristotle to Newton (Princeton 1994), and Philosophical Issues in Aristotle’s Biology (Cambridge 1987). He is the author of “Aristotle and the Origins of Zoology” for The Cambridge History of Science: Volume 1. Lennox has held fellowships at Harvard’s Center for Hellenic Studies and at the University of Bologna’s Institute for Advanced Study. He is a founding member and currently co-secretary of the Ayn Rand Society, affiliated with the American Philosophical Association."
To support the show and help us grow our audience -- so we have more of an impact on education and the culture -- please help us with a donation:
1. https://www.patreon.com/reasonrxpodcast
2. https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=SP6QPQKJU4XSS&source=url
Also, please consider liking us on your podcast app, and leaving a rational review.
And if you find an episode valuable, please share it with parents, teachers, school personnel, friends, and family. Help spread the word, help spread rational ideas for better living.
Contact Michael:
1. reasonrxpodcast@aol.com
2. http://www.goldams.com
3. https://www.facebook.com/EpistemeRx/
4. https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-gold-2883921/
Show notes:
1. Books by Dr. Lennox (written, edited, or contributed)
https://www.amazon.com/kindle-dbs/entity/author/B001HOQWT6
2. Works of Dr. Lennox
https://philpapers.org/s/James%20G.%20Lennox
3. Fitness
i. Movnat
a. https://www.movnat.com
b. https://www.youtube.com/user/MovNat
ii. Katy Bowman and Nutritious Movement
a. https://www.nutritiousmovement.com
b. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/move-your-dna-with-katy-bowman/id894200695
iii. Functional Movement Systems
a. https://www.functionalmovement.com
b. https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/movement-podcast/id1516334100
4. Bernd Heinrich
i. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17806876
ii. https://www.spreaker.com/episode/17872721
5. E.O. Wilson in Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge: "Few [scientists] are philosophers. Most are intellectual journeyman, exploring locally, hoping for a strike, living for the present."
6. E. Bright Wilson, Professor Chemistry at Harvard, in An Introduction to Scientific Research: “Practical scientists who rashly allow themselves to listen to philosophers are likely to go away in a discouraged frame of mind, convinced that there is no logical foundation for the things they do, that all their alleged scientific laws are without justification, and that they are living in a world of naïve illusion. Of course, once they get out into the sunlight again, they know that this is not so, that scientific principles do work, bridges stay up, eclipses occur on schedule, and atomic bombs go off.
“Nevertheless, it is very unsatisfactory that no generally acceptable theory of scientific inference has yet been put forward. … Mistakes are often made which would presumably not have been made if a consistent and satisfactory basic philosophy had been followed.”
7. Isaac Newton’s Rules of Reasoning in Science:
“Rule 1 We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.
“Rule 2 Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.
“Rule 3. The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intensification nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to all bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
“Rule 4. In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, not withstanding any contrary hypothesis that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions.”
8. Alexander Pope: “Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night:
God said, Let Newton be! and all was light.”
https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/168406-nature-and-nature-s-laws-lay-hid-in-night-god-said
9. Galileo: "I should even think that in making the celestial material alterable, I contradict the doctrine of Aristotle much less than do those people who still want to keep the sky inalterable; for I am sure that he never took its inalterability to be as certain as the fact that all human reasoning must be placed second to direct experience."
From the Second Letter of Galileo Galilei to Mark Welser on Sunspots, p. 118 of Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake, (c) 1957 by Stillman Drake, published by Doubleday Anchor Books, Doubleday & Co., Garden City, New York
10. Atle Naess, in his book Galileo Galilei – When the World Stood Still: “Galileo’s radical renewal sprang, nevertheless, from the Aristotelian mind set, as it was taught at the Jesuits’ Collegio Romano: human reason has a basic ability to recognize and understand the objects registered by the senses. The objects are real. They have properties that can be perceived, and then ‘further processed’ according to logical rules. These logical concepts are also real (if not in exactly the same way as the physical objects).”
11. Aristotle's book The Posterior Analytics
i. http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/posterior.html
ii. https://www.amazon.com/Aristotle-Posterior-Analytics-Topica-Classical/dp/0674994302/
12. Archimedes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes
13. Apollonius
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonius_of_Perga
14. Ptolemy
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ptolemy
15. John Herschel
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Herschel
16. William Whewell
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/whewell/
17. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georg_Wilhelm_Friedrich_Hegel
b. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hegel/
c. https://iep.utm.edu/hegelsoc/
18. Immanuel Kant
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immanuel_Kant
b. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/kant/
c. philosophy of mind: https://iep.utm.edu/kantmind/
19. Plato's Republic
a. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_(Plato)
b. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/plato-ethics-politics/
c. https://iep.utm.edu/republic/
20. Dr. Lennox's quoted translation of Aristotle in the Parts of Animals, Chapter 5, Book 1
https://goldams.com/aristotle-on-loving-biology/
21. Recommendations for physics laid out historically (but not for their philosophy of science):
i. Introductory Physics: An Historical Approach by Dr. Herbert Priestley
https://www.amazon.com/Introductory-physics-historical-approach-College/dp/B0000CK5V4/
ii. Notes of Dr. Michael Fowler
a. http://galileoandeinstein.physics.virginia.edu
b. http://galileo.phys.virginia.edu/classes/252/home.html
iii. The astronomy section in Physics for the Inquiring Mind by Dr. Eric Rogers
a. https://www.amazon.com/Physics-Inquiring-Mind-Philosophy-Physical/dp/069108016X/
b. https://archive.org/details/PhysicsForTheInquiringMind-Rogers
c. http://self.gutenberg.org/wplbn0003099703-physics-for-the-enquiring-mind-by-eric-m-rogers.aspx
Other notes:
Daniel Robinson, in Lecture 12: Aristotle on the Knowable, The Great Ideas of Philosophy: “I have occasionally said to classes that if I had to single out any event as evidence of some civilization in a distant galaxy beyond the Milky Way, taking pity on us for the slow progress of the human imagination in dealing with its problems, the evidence might well be the life of Aristotle and his accomplishments. It's almost as if such a distant galactic neighbor might have said 'For goodness sake those human beings don't seem to be getting on with it at all. Aristotle, why don't you go down there and get things going?’ " (https://www.amazon.com/Great-Ideas-Philosophy-2nd/dp/B00DTO51JY)
Bio and image courtesy James Lennox.
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