By Josef Spence – Contributor

At a couple of different times throughout this semester, I have heard some students question why they need to learn philosophy. After all, they are in science programs. So what does philosophy really have to do with their studies? Well, it is actually an extremely important subject 

for everyone – particularly science students to study – so that they actually have an understanding of the world, or at least understand where their knowledge and understanding of the world ends. Let me give some background. 

A couple of years ago, a new liberal arts course, LIB218: The History and Philosophy of Science, was introduced to the academic calendar, and thus, into the course offerings of Bishop’s University. Soon after, the Department of Psychology made this course mandatory for both their BA in Psychology and their BA in Humanistic Psychology. Unaware of this, I was pleasantly surprised to arrive in this course in September and find many students who usually only care about the straight, hard science we are used to studying, but this requirement makes a lot of sense. 

If LIB218 achieves anything, it makes you realize that there are a lot of assumptions people make every time that they do science about the fundamental nature of the world and science itself, and every time that they solely rely on this area. This is not to claim that science is not helpful or important; it is. Nonetheless, I think that it is important that people who rely on science, and especially people who partake in the study of science, understand what is the real, theoretical foundation that science rests on. Without this understanding, they are likely to make unwittingly brash declarations about the laws of nature or the capabilities of science. They are less likely to be willing to consider other positions, besides that of the strictly scientific, which would render their scientific proclamations productions of their prejudices even if they are correct, for these thinkers failed to consider all possible explanations for the phenomena they are observing. 

Yet, knowledge of the philosophy underpinning science does more individually than just help ensure scientists do not make presumptuous or ignorant assertions about the world. It also helps to form people into more rounded, more learned individuals. The basis of a liberal arts education, which is of course, the model of education at Bishop’s, is that the more of an understanding a person has of the different aspects of the world, the better the person will be, both socially and morally. I argue along these lines that even though philosophy may not be what someone has come to Bishop’s to study, it is important that people have a basic understanding of it to better round themselves out. Even better if it can be in relation to something of importance to everyday life and their general studies, like science. 

So I applaud the Department of Psychology for making it mandatory for most of their majors to learn the basic foundation of philosophy for their broader studies. Yet further, I hope that one day all the science students at Bishop’s will be taking this or some course similar. For, as the great physicist and mathematician Albert Einstein noted: “The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious… whoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.”¹ So let the students of science have their wonder prompted and their marvel lifted in the mysterious philosophy underpinning our world of science. 

¹ Albert Einstein, “The World as I See It”, in Ideas and Opinions, p. 8