Quote Originally Posted by Badgemash View Post

I get that you like natural history and are a self proclaimed science geek, but I am an actual scientist at a tier 1 research university, so I'm going to go ahead and clear up some of your apparent confusion. The scientific method is NOT a part of philosophy, it a set of procedures and methods which ensure that experimental results are measurable and repeatable. The scientific review process actually does a very nice job of differentiating between quality work and shoddy work, that is why journals are peer reviewed. No one in my department, or any other department that I'm aware of encourages our students to take philosophy, we do however stongly encourage developing writing skills. If you want an education or job at a top research institution you'd better be able to write grant proposals, because getting consistant funding and getting published are the keys to success.

Science is based on empirical, measurable evidence, philosophy and religion are the diciplines that involve the impossible to prove or disprove theories.
thats very interesting, but still.... when you look at the history of modern science and the history of the scientific method, many important aspects were developed and added by philosophers. For example, the last important piece was added by Karl Popper no sooner than 1934. before that, there were some good and legitimate scientific theories that are still valid, but there were also theories floating around in the scientific mainstream that are now completely discredited as pseudoscience. with his concept of falsifiability, he added the last of the characteristics that a modern scientific theory must fulfill, and he was a philosopher. also, science itself started out as natural philosophy, a branch of philosophy that made certain assumptions (for example: reality can be understood) and developed a set of guidelines (for example: empiricism is the way to understand reality) that need to be followed. this specific subset of philosophy eventually evolved into modern science, and the assumptions and rules these natural philosophers worked out evolved into the scientific method.

based on that history, a strong case can be made that science still is a specific philosophy, and that the adherents of that specific philosophy are called scientists.

im not saying that people studying science should also study philosophy in general, (i agree that much of it is a waste of time), just the history of science, that would be helpful, and half of that history is philosophy. heck, the royal society was founded by groups of physicians and natural philosophers that attempted to learn more about the world by doing tabletop experiments and live demonstrations. today its made up of top research scientists and theoretical scientists. these philosophers also started the first scientific journal in 1665, the philosophical transactions of the royal society, since 1800 known as the proceedings of the royal society, today the royal society still publishes a number of prestigious peer-reviewed scientific journals.