The scientific image

Perhaps I differ from other naturalistically-inclined philosophers in that the range of sciences from chemistry to cell biology is what I was raised with. My impression is that most naturalists who have roots in the natural sciences come from physics, psychology, or something related to evolution.

This goes back to my earliest upbringing. Dad’s whole journey from deep poverty in India to being a chemistry postdoc in the US happened because he could understand huge molecules from the atoms up. He would often speak with reverence of RB Woodward’s synthesis of vitamin B12. There were periodic table posters on the walls of the houses I was raised in; I ate off periodic table placemats.

There’s that famous Wilfrid Sellars line about philosophy reconciling the manifest image with the scientific image. The scientific image seems a lot more familiar to me than many people’s accounts of the manifest image. To me the scientific image is less physics and equations than the periodic table and the way mitochondria make ATP. I like how it helps me understand what’s going on in nature.

I thought I would be a scientist until the second semester of organic chemistry at Harvard. The big molecules just perplexed me, and my teachers generally shrugged and smiled at the inelegance of their interactions. These things are discovered in the lab, not derived elegantly from chemical principles. Dad could sometimes still just see what the molecules would do; I could not. I was falling madly in love with philosophy at the same time, and I followed my heart.

Elegant explanations often emerge from the sciences that philosophers know best – physics, psychology, evolutionary stuff. I like elegant explanations, and those sciences connect well to philosophically interesting issues. But I know that mostly science is going to be the big messy slog of Dad trial-and-erroring his hypotheses about reactions in the chemistry lab until he comes home for dinner.