[FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology

[Prof David West]

The evolution of philosophy to science is ubiquitous. Charles Needham documented how essentially all of Chinese science evolved from, mostly, Taoist philosophy.  Computational Science ala Leibniz derived from the Theistic Philosophy of Ramon Lull. Alchemy to Chemistry, etc. etc.

I agree with Glen, that is irrelevant to the problem he posed.

Can't provide a controlled experiment of the sort he suggested, but I can provide a supporting anecdote.

The software apprenticeship program I did at Highlands mandated a whole lot of philosophy and history of computing and technology as well as some Taoism and other philosophical odds and ends. We also made them read poetry and study anthropology, so the philosophy may or may not have been the prime determinant of results.

But, 22 students, 1 year in the program including freshmen who could not use a word processor to a couple of grad students with professional experience. (We had a one-room classroom.)

10 of the students published papers, that year, at one of the two refereed conferences with the highest rejection rates in the US at the time.

The "no cut and paste" student was supervising other students working on a Java J2EE project for the State Engineer's Office after one semester.

All of the students, including the freshmen with only that one year of apprenticeship, were placed in full-time developer jobs at the State of New Mexico or Los Alamos Labs (in admin area, not nuclear science area) when felon Aragon canceled the program.

The work of the students won an award from the New Mexico Information, Software, and Technology Association.

Definitely above average performance and due, at least in some small measure, to the philosophy — or so I think.

davew


On Thu, Mar 12, 2020, at 6:05 PM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> Sorry, Glen.  I didn't mean to imply any kind of argument in the 
> matter.  The comment just interested me, and I thought you might have 
> information to share with me.  It wasn't clear that I could even 
> support the more general proposition, the one I thought you were 
> making, let alone the more specific one that you actually made. 
> 
> Nick 
> 
> Nicholas Thompson
> Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology
> Clark University
> ThompNickSon2 at gmail.com
> https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/
>  
> 
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Friam <friam-bounces at redfish.com> On Behalf Of u?l? ?
> Sent: Thursday, March 12, 2020 10:58 AM
> To: FriAM <friam at redfish.com>
> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] science privilege — fork from acid epistemology
> 
> I'm not going to answer because that's irrelevant. The challenge is 
> whether or not conversations like this impact the science done by those 
> who have them.
> 
> On 3/12/20 9:56 AM, thompnickson2 at gmail.com wrote:
> > Ah!  When you say that the benefit of philosophy to science is "straightforward", what do you have in mind? 
> --
> ☣ uǝlƃ
> 
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