Kim Sterelny on Integrative Philosophy of Science

Kim Sterelny: I think philosophers do two different things. So one of the things that they do is methodological. They reflect upon the methods of the natural sciences. When someone says, I do philosophy of science, especially if they said I do philosophy of science 20 years ago or 30 years ago, what they probably would have been doing is that in the last 10 to 15 years, there’s been a different kind of philosophy of science, something that always existed, but was sort of more peripheral, has become more central and that is to see philosophy as having a kind of integrative of role. So one of the things about the sciences is a relentlessly forced specialisation and sub-specialisation and even further sub-specialisation, you know, because the literature in any one area becomes so vast, the technical demands of experimentation and so on become so intense that it becomes it becomes more and more difficult for someone who is an active practitioner of science, who’s actually kind of generating the data or building the formal models to do — to also integrate across different fields. So this integrative role is becoming more and more important in philosophy of science and that requires people like me who are prepared to kind of immerse themselves in the empirical literature of different fields and become, if not fluent in them, at least slightly more than a broken L2 speaker of them. Ah, do a little bit of pidgin biology and pidgin linguistics in order to try and put together overall pictures. You know, assemble from the different fragments that are provided by the different sciences something like an integrative overview and that both gives us an overall picture, but it also generates new questions. As you go from the micro scale to the meso scale to the macro scale, new issues and new problems emerge. So those are the two main areas in which I think philosophers have contributed historically, more the first, on the methodological issue, now increasingly I think this kind of integrative overviewing, trying to put together a synthesised story from the various bits and pieces that the different sciences provide. And my work’s been much more of the second kind than the first kind. I mean, I have done a bit on the first side, you know, but I would think of myself as working centrally in that kind of second theme.--Kim Sterelny interviewed by Rosey Billington, June 2020 [HT Walter Veit]

I encountered a reference to the interview of Sterelny in a excellent, methodological chapter of Walter Veit's dissertation on what I have been calling 'synthetic philosophy'' (see also recent post). I was immensely pleased by the interview (not least because the transcript and the video are both available). But for present purposes primarily because of the passage quoted above. In my original article I had used Sterelny as an exemplar of synthetic philosophy (check out note 15)! And so I was pleased to see him describe himself that reasonably fit what I had ascribed to him. (When I do history of philosophy my subjects do not talk balk; so it's always a bit nerve-wracking when a subject does even if they are unaware of me.)

Before I get to that I want reflect a bit on Sterelny's distinction between two kinds of philosophy of science. The second kind of philosophy of science, which I dub integrative philosophy (so as not to saddle him with what I call synthetic philosophy, and also to make a distinction between the two below) is  while not new, increasingly important. The first, more traditionally important kind of philosophy of science is focused on scientific methodology. This surprised me because while Sterelny is about a generation older than I am, I would not have expected this answer. Let me explain.

When I was a PhD student at the end of the twentieth century, the quasi-Reichenbachian distinction between context of discovery and context of justification was taught as a rejected wisdom. But in practice, the idea that there was no true genuine method or logic of scientific discovery was kind of accepted (unless you were some die-hard Popperian). This meant that if you were interested in philosophy of science, you could either (i) study norms of justification (in confirmation theory or epistemology), which rests on a quasi-transcendental assumption (QTA): if anything counts as knowledge it is fallible science, so let's now articulate how this is possible; or (ii) you could do a kind of study of messy reality of the special sciences in practice/history. The latter option led to the growth of interest in models, mechanisms, measurement, simulation, etc.; (iii) or you became a kind of speculative cosmologist at the farthest reaches of mathematical physics or contributed to theoretical biology, theoretical cognitive science, etc. A lot of us were weird mixtures. 

To put this in anecdotally and as an aside. I was familiar with a methodologist and have even co-authored with one; my then somewhat obscure undergraduate teacher, George Smith, was focused on evidential arguments in science, but (a) it was for a long time disconnected from the rest of philosophy of science, and (b) it self-consciously treated the practice of turning data into high quality evidence as a historical process extended over centuries. Since now, Smith has inspired the rise of a school (mediated through Michael Friedman and Katherine Brading) it may be worth articulating distinctive features of it. But that's for another time.

Anyway, maybe I am misremembering the state of play or maybe Sterelny and I inhabited slightly different ecological niches in the profession (related to age difference). Let me turn to his account of integrative philosophy. It is a response to the cognitive division of labor and hyperspecialization within and among the sciences. And this generates an intellectual demand for integration. The way Sterelny describes it echoes (perhaps subconsciously) the treatment of pidgin at the borders of scientific trading zones popularized by Peter Galison (which now has its own wikipedia page). But the integrative philosopher is not trading between sciences (or technology) but with the system of sciences. And rather than creating a unified language -- in the manner of Neurath's unity of science or Quine's regimented language --, the integrative philosopher can speak lots of pidgin.

The aim of the integrative philosopher is to produce synthetically an 'overall picture,' and perhaps to generate new research questions at the level of the special sciences and/or the general picture. Sterelny is a bit vague (it's a short interview) what this is a picture of, but presumably it is a part of what is known as the scientific image. I say 'part' because presumably nobody can learn a sufficient number of pidgins to present a complete overall picture. I wouldn't be surprised if, before long, we will have integrative philosophers who will offer a scientific image based on a number of such partial scientific images ground in scientific pidgins.

What is worth noting here is that Sterelny is very clear that to be an integrative philosopher is high risk! For leaving aside the fact that sciences may evolve and leave one having bet on the wrong horse (ask all the philosophers who cited underpowered, unreplicated studies), if one is not an expert in the field one may well miss key nuance or distinction (this may even be consequence of the pidgin, which may be underpowered relative to the highly mathematical underlying science). It also means that an integrative philosopher lacks what we may call, distinctive expertise. She is a hybrid persona, who is open to criticism both at the level of the special sciences and at the integrative level. 

Now in many ways Sterelny's integrative philosopher is much like what I have called a 'synthetic philosopher.'  (Recall: by synthetic philosophy I mean a style of philosophy that brings together insights, knowledge, and arguments from the special sciences with the aim to offer a coherent account of complex systems and connect these to a wider culture, policy, or other philosophical projects (or both). In particular, the synthetic glue tends to be a general theory or theories.) But there is a key difference. From a synthetic philosophy perspective, generating a whole picture, the integration, requires a particular kind of language, that is a general theory (in other posts I have given examples of the kinds I have in mind). And such a theory creates constraints on the nature of integration and also reduces risk.

Obviously, if one only focuses on the integrative element in synthetic philosophy there is no real difference between Sterelny's comments and synthetic philosophy. Yet, on my view, a synthetic philosopher is  an expert on a general theory (the glue of integration) in addition to pidgin competence in the special sciences. (Of course, sometimes the general theory -- e.g., game theory, bayesianism, evodevo, ANT, etc -- is already spoken in the special science.)  I don't want to overemphasize my present differences with Sterelny. He is one of the foremost philosophical Darwinian theorists of our age, and I was pleased to single him out as an exemplary synthetic philosopher in my paper. And so I don't view what I am saying as a criticism of his (first order) philosophy. (He is more a synthetic philosopher in practice than I am!) But there is a difference between being a highly skilled amateur in many domains, the integrative philosopher, and the expertise with distinctive standards of evaluation that a synthetic philosopher applies and develops. 

Comments

[David Duffy]

"pidgins" - I think this is an unnecessarily pessimistic picture. Consider, say, the contents of the current issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology
https://academic.oup.com/aje/issue/189/5
It covers causal inference, statistical methods, COVID-19, toxicology, school policy and physical and mental health, cognitive psychology, biology of chronic renal disease etc etc. An epidemiologist will be expected to have some real familiarity with all these topics, even if they specialize in particular areas. I don't think of these are all "easy" topics.

[George Gale]

Nice pieces, both Kim and Eric. One thing that has to be reckened for, at least in the US. There is no coup counted, there is no glory, in what is loosely called "inter-disciplinary work." For example, my work that was published in physics journals was for years not counted. I think this prejudice lingers in departments, particularly very conservative philosophy departments, and must be reckoned with.