How to Reform Scientific Practice, Scientific Education

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Dewey was a famous educational theorist. He modeled his whole theory of education on what he took to be a more realistic model of scientific inquiry is done. The idea would be you sort of give people problems, materials with which to solve those problems and space to reflect on what they're doing as they're doing it. In the process of doing this, you're going to learn a bunch of facts about scientific inquiry because in some sense science is that kind of activity but scaled up and in much more communication with people. It's way more fun learning all that.

Everybody talks about the truth, but nobody does anything about it. And to be honest, how we talk about truth — what it is, and how to get there — can be a little sloppy at times. Philosophy to the rescue! I had a very ambitious conversation with Liam Kofi Bright, starting with what we mean by “truth” (correspondence, coherence, pragmatist, and deflationary approaches), and then getting into the nitty-gritty of how we actually discover it. There’s a lot to think about once we take a hard look at how science gets done, how discoveries are communicated, and what different kinds of participants can bring to the table.

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Liam Kofi Bright received his Ph.D. in Logic, Computation and Methodology from Carnegie Mellon University. He is currently on the faculty of the London School of Economics in the Department of Philosophy, Logic, and the Scientific Method. He has worked on questions concerning peer review and fraud in scientific communities, intersectionality, logical empiricism, and Africana philosophy. He is well-known on Twitter as the Last Positivist.

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