Science doesn’t have a monopoly on good ideas

Early in the 20th century, physicists were faced with deep questions about what the strange new mathematical framework of the dawning quantum age revealed about the true nature of reality. After wrestling with the problem, many settled on a simple answer: shut up and calculate.

This mantra, which reflects a preference for using the tools of quantum mechanics without thinking too deeply about their philosophical implications, might as well have been a rallying cry for science as a whole. Scientists often prefer to focus only on what they can calculate and avoid other modes of knowledge. It is only recently that the study of consciousness has been seen as a scientific discipline, rather than best left to philosophical thinkers, for example. Meanwhile, some climate researchers are happy to produce models demonstrating the effects of growing emissions on the atmosphere, but decline to name the political implications of tackling the problem, for fear of stepping too far beyond science.

At New Scientist, we, of course, believe that science is the best way of making sense of the world, but that doesn’t mean it has to be the only way. As we explore, a more pluralistic approach to ideas has the potential to reap intellectual benefits when it comes to answering the big questions like “where do the laws of nature come from?”

But in allowing philosophy into the lab, we must not let it be accompanied by dogma or muscle out evidence and the scientific method. A recent case that perhaps went too far is the idea that trees share resources via a “wood wide web”. As ecologist Suzanne Simard explains, the backlash to her promoting this idea came from people feeling she had overreached on what the science can say.

The lesson, though, is not to dismiss philosophy – as the calculating quantum physicists did – but instead to see it as another tool in the scientific toolbox. Science doesn’t have a monopoly on good ideas, and as long as it can be justified in evidence, knowledge from other disciplines should be welcomed.