🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <1992Aug28.133107.8402@math.ucla.edu> barry@arnold.math.ucla.edu 
(Barry Merriman) writes:

   >I might add that this is another thing that separates philosophical
   >study from scientific study. We don't worry about reading the
   >original works, or dwelling on the lives and miscellaneous writings
   >of the originators of physical theory. For some reason that I don't
   >understand, philosphers still devote much time to original 
   >works from Descartes, Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Kierkegaard, etc, etc, 
   >rather than merely focusing on the concepts themselves, divorced
   >from their proponents (and their proponents generally inferior
   >original presentations).

   How do you divorce the concepts of Spinoza's philosophy from his
writings? That's not an easy task. Of course somebody who believes that
there is no worthwhile thinking outside science will find nothing of
value in Spinoza, but bemoan the absence of any testable Spinozistic
theory separable from his writings. But this is a silly attitude.

  As for original works in science, if you don't understand why
philosophers are interested in them, this indicates that you are not
interested in the question what science is, how scientific theories
are arrived at, why and how they are rejected or accepted, what is
necessary for science to make progress, what is unctious cant and what
is sound observation in the manifold statements thrown at us
concerning what "science" is and does. Which of course is perfectly
ok, but your remarks about the philosophy of science are really no
more relevant to a consideration of that topic than the sermon of a
fundamentalist minister is to the current state of evolutionary
theory.