80 years on from Schrödinger’s ‘What Is Life?’, philosophy of biology needs rescuing from radicals

What Is Life? by Erwin Schrödinger was a seminal work in philosophy of biology. Published in 1944, this modern classic served as inspiration for Francis Crick and James Watson to pursue the structure of DNA. Numerous important scientists of the molecular biology revolution of the 1950s referenced it as inspirational to them in tackling the biological challenges of the time. The middle of the twentieth century was throbbing with new possibilities, and the big philosophical questions that accompanied them were embraced. What Is Life? was a benchmark for philosophy of science, and it came from one of a generation of great scientific thinkers who essentially founded the discipline, including Einstein, Eddington, Jeans, and Heisenberg.

However, shortly after this blooming, we find Richard Feynman expressing his contempt for philosophy of science as a discipline that had become dominated by non-scientists, a dismissal that rings even truer today.

What Is Life? is a fine example of philosophy meeting biology and producing quality interdisciplinary work. The molecular biology revolution was a practical outworking of the philosophical appetite of the time, well expressed by Schrödinger. Unless one credits Aristotle et al, philosophy of science as an academic discipline is little more than a century old. It aims to critically analyse and reflect on what science is, how it works, and the questions it asks. It puts another eye on the game, distinct from its partners, history of science and sociology of science. (I admit that I care little for sociology of science, which treats science more as a human activity than as a way of discovering actual reality ‘out there’ in nature.)

This brings me to Feynman’s distaste for the discipline. By the time he won his Nobel in 1965, it would be fair to say that philosophy of science was no longer the same field as it had been: now, it was full of musings from those in the humanities. ‘How dare these outsiders tell us what is really going on?’ was the attitude of those in Feynman’s camp. How can those who have not done any science critique what is being done by scientists, analyse what is wrong with it, and discuss its true value? It all added up to a waste of time and money for Feynman.

Fast forward to our modern challenges. Recently, I was shocked to read that the controversial postmodern ideologue Judith Butler is considered a philosopher of biology. Butler’s writings on gender, for those unfamiliar with them, have been fairly criticised for so severely underplaying the biological component of gender that you would be forgiven for thinking that biology plays no part in our development. She was also the winner of the 1998 ‘Bad Writing Contest’, hosted by the journal Philosophy and Literature, for an incomprehensible sentence in one of her articles.¹

But the characterization of Butler as a philosopher of biology is not (entirely) wrong. If an informed layperson were asked to name one modern philosopher of biology, they might well name Butler. But she is as far removed as someone in academia could be from the sciences. Her education is in literature, feminism, and philosophy, and she owes more to Hegel than to Schrödinger. Someone who believes that sex is assigned at birth rather than observed by a doctor has no business in philosophy of biology. (Other feminists who might be considered philosophers of biology, like the excellent Kathleen Stock, are much more worth listening to.)

There is a straight line to be drawn from Butler’s work to those in the humanities who now claim that biological sex itself does not exist—as anti-scientific a statement as one will ever hear. Eighty years on from What Is Life?, Feynman’s contempt is even more justified. Now, so-called experts from the humanities dominate philosophy of science and are boosting the cause of science denialism more than anyone else even as they claim to be working against it.

It is time to return philosophy of science to those who respect both philosophy of science and science itself. To be clear, there are a great many philosophers of science today who are intimately acquainted with the realities of science and who are doing first-class work in legitimate journals. They treat the discipline with the original, historical respect that it deserves. Their work would not be out of place amongst the reflections written by the giants of the field’s golden era. In other words, there is a universe of difference between Judith Butler and someone like Michael Ruse. As a whole, though, the field is in dire straits.

Let me share a personal anecdote to illustrate what is missing in philosophy of biology. Three years ago, during an interview for a PhD position at a major British university, my surprised potential supervisor halted the interview about thirty seconds in. ‘Hold on, it says here that you have an actual science degree?’ I could not hide my own surprise and affirmed that that was correct. She then put down her papers and remarked, ‘Well, that is a tremendous advantage for you. Do you have ambitions of working in academia?’ I told her that that was very much my dream, but I failed to hide the surprise still written across my face. The interview shifted and I became the one asking questions: Did most professional philosophers of science not have a science background? Apparently not—and it seemed that if I wanted to get ahead, I was in possession of a serious advantage.

One does not have to be a scientist to be a historian or philosopher of science, but today as much as ever, scientists are needed to contribute to philosophy of science. Otherwise, those who have no business speaking in the name of science are gifted large platforms to mislead a general public that might not know any better. This is also why skilled science communicators are so desperately needed.

When one looks at the great names who gave the twentieth-century Gifford Lectures or the Eddington Memorial Lectures, one sees an extraordinary array. There are prize winners and legends from some of science’s golden eras. They each speak philosophically about the questions or meanings of their work or reflect on what the future may hold. This tradition survives today, among the likes of Lord Martin Rees and Sir Roger Penrose, but it is attenuated. Rees and Penrose certainly deserve a greater platform than Butler et al.

Perhaps the problem is one of space as much as communication skills. The platforms for great philosophers of science, or scientist philosophers, are not proportionate to their contributions. Education is also lacking, as undergraduate philosophy programs hardly ever feature philosophy of science in their curricula. Unfortunately, I have also sat through many philosophy lectures that are anti-scientific, pseudoscientific, or just plain mistaken. In continental philosophy and postmodern departments, science is very much the enemy: it is an oppressive force invented by white Western men to establish the patriarchy and is unable to make any claims to truth or reality. This is a very serious problem at a time when science needs to be understood more than ever.

The solution may well be to give scientists a larger platform in society. Post-pandemic, distrust in science (and expertise in general) has increased, even as science—from developments in artificial intelligence to revolutions in cancer research—has become more important than ever for our present and future. Each Sunday morning as I drive through Beaconsfield’s old town on the outskirts of London, I see protestors clad in white inviting us to toot our car horns if we agree with them on the latest conspiratorial, anti-science propaganda they are spouting. At first it was amusing, but now it simply depresses me.

In the space of eighty years, and to an alarming extent, philosophy of science has degenerated. Once, it inspired revolutionary breakthroughs. Now, it is dominated by thinkers who have not seen a laboratory or an observatory since high school and who use their platforms to disseminate nonsense. They have helped to usher in a conspiratorial atmosphere laced with distrust of and cynicism about the sciences. To combat them, we need to recover our sense about science.

1. Take a deep breath:
   
   ‘The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.’ ↩︎

Related reading

On sex, gender and their consequences: interview with Louise Antony, by Emma Park

‘We are at a threshold right now’: Lawrence Krauss on science, atheism, religion, and the crisis of ‘wokeism’ in science, by Daniel James Sharp

Consciousness, free will and meaning in a Darwinian universe: interview with Daniel C. Dennett, by Daniel James Sharp

‘When the chips are down, the philosophers turn out to have been bluffing’, interview with Alex Byrne by Emma Park

‘A godless neo-religion’ – interview with Helen Joyce on the trans debate, by Emma Park

‘An animal is a description of ancient worlds’: interview with Richard Dawkins, by Emma Park

The falsehood at the heart of the trans movement, by Eliza Mondegreen

South Asia’s silenced feminists, by Kunwar Khuldune Shahid

Linnaeus, Buffon, and the battle for biology, by Charles Foster