philosophy of science

I'm a medical doctor. I have a science degree, a medical degree and a post-graduate medical diploma. I'm currently working on a research degree (MD). I like science. I like learning stuff. I like to know how things work.

So why is science good? Why is science valid? Why is aspirin better than a homeopathic medication if you have a heart attack? Why do type 1 diabetics prefer insulin to acupuncture? Why is the theory of evolution more credible than creationism?

I've always been interested in these questions and when I was at medical school I did a special study module entitled 'introduction to the philosophy of science'. (in medical school you normally get to do a couple of 'special study modules' to broaden your horizons and help you appreciate life outside medicine). I took this module with 2 of the more intellectually adventurous guys in my medical school. It basically involved us sitting around and having a nice chat with a professional philosopher at Warwick University for 3 hours every week. I loved it.

We were able to convince the philosopher to assess us with an evening 'poster presentation' with cheese and beer. It was great.

One of the big problems with clinical medicine is that you don't get to think much. You solve clinical problems quickly. You sort people out, patching them up and 'fixing' them efficiently so that you can tend to as many patients as possible. You graduate from medical school and all of a sudden it's 6 years later. You're 30 years old and you've barely drawn breath.

I wanted to do clinical research for many reasons. I always wanted to be a scientist and discover stuff. Obviously I realise that the concept of actually 'discovering' something in medicine is a load of bollocks but as a child it really appealed to me. I also wanted to pause for breath and check my pulse after several years of clinical medicine. It's nice to be your own taskmaster for a while and to be able to escape the Stalinist thrust of the NHS. I love the NHS but it wears you down. I wanted to keep the option of a future career in academic medicine open and I wanted some time to teach medical students and learn a bit more about my own medical subspeciality. I feel that I am achieving most of these goals.

I better return to the point of this post. As part of my research degree I recently took a further course on the philosophy of science. The course was good and rejuvenated my interest in the subject.

The course tackled several interesting subjects. The main difference between science and pseudoscience seems to rest in properties of scientific theories. If a theory is scientific it can be tested experimentally and potentially proven wrong. Pseudoscience is often untestable. Many scientific theories are backed by expermental data. Pseudosciences are often slow to produce objective evidence.

The course also tackled the relationship between science and religion. Science and religion are very different things and they probably should be kept as far apart as possible. Religion only devalues itself by trying to interfere with science and scientific attempts to disprove religion are probably futile and seem to be as meanspirited as kicking the crutches away from a man with one leg. Science and religion are non-overlapping majesteria and should probably be kept apart.

As a side issue I would say that clinical medicine is probably more of an art than a science. Patients are not experiments and we should remember that.

The course also looked at the evolution vs. creation science debate. Basically creationists are idiots who do not understand evolutionary theory or its implications. Creationists expose themselves to ridicule and their religion is damaged by attempts to describe fossils as 'a test'. Even in Darwins lifetime evolution was described as 'religions friend disguised as a foe'. The person who made this statement was observing that the process of evolution could be seen as a mechanism of intelligent design that could have been used by some interventionalist creator God. If I was a religious nutter I would be promoting evolution as evidence of devine fingerprints. Creationists are a bit too stupid to pick up on this. I'm happy to settle for Pascal's wager myself.

So, to summarise this rambling post, the philosophy of science is an attempt to explain why science is important and why it can be trusted and why it is more useful that reading a horoscope.

If you want to read a bit more on the topic try
What is this thing called science by A.F.Chalmers
Philosophy of science - a very short introduction by Samir Okasha