The original know-nothing (image: Wiki Commons).

Richard Feynman allegedly said, in a much cited but surprisingly difficult to source aphorism (the closest Opposing T came to a reference was an attribution to a BBC Horizon episode), that the “philosophy of science is about as useful to scientists as ornithology is to birds”.

Overtly philosophical questions do pop up in Biology, the oldest and most popular pair being “what is life?” and “how did life begin?”. Most biologists would recognize that these questions can’t be definitively answered. The first because it has, at least until now, remained trapped in qualitative and subjective discussions; the second because it refers to a singular event in the past that left no direct trace. Of course similar themes arise in Physics (“what is matter?” or “how did the Universe begin?”), but clearly Feynman did not feel, to put it lightly, that the discussions were enriched by philosophical contributions*.

A separate branch of philosophy deals with more grounded issues, including the scientific method. Seamus O’Mahony pens in the Dublin Review of Books a thoughtful piece on Harry Collins’ recently released Are We All Scientific Experts Now?. You do not have to be the world’s greatest prosecutor- or the founder of philosophy- to make the case that, given the current wave of high profile publication retractions and the general unease about reproducibility of biological and medical data even absent misconduct, perhaps an examination from first principles of current methods is not an entirely abstruse idea.  

* This holds whether or not this particular quote turns out to be apocryphal. There is no lack of material on Feynman’s contempt for the topic- though my own feeling is that it stems mainly from a healthy aversion to arguments from authority.