What a waste of time….

Posted on November 8, 2009
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An in iterview with Lewis Olpert,  From The Philosopher’s Magazine

Now 78, Wolpert has not exactly mellowed when it comes to his hostility to philosophers. He is personally charming, but when we got to philosophy, the phrases “totally unintelligible”, “no use whatsoever” and “gobbledegook” were bandied around with a vigour that was somewhere between irritation and zest.

We got off to a good start when I asked him when he first came into contact with philosophy.

“It was probably in relation to the philosophy of science, and I can’t even remember where it was, but it was quite late in life. I did read Popper’s book, and I hated it. I once wrote that it was the most over-rated book in the last 500 years.”

Wolpert had first-hand experience of how scientists worked, and simply found Popper’s ideas about the scientific method had nothing to do with that, and no one else he has come across since has been any better.

“Nothing in Popper or in any other philosophy of science has anything relevant to say about science. I don’t know of any scientist who takes the slightest interest in the philosophy of science, although I do think Peter Medawar was quite keen on Popper, to my surprise.”

A lot of people who claim philosophy is a waste of time can be tricked into conceding at least something by being drawn into an obviously philosophical discussion about the value of philosophy. With commendable consistency, Wolpert repeatedly rebuffed attempts to open up that kind of dialogue. So, for instance, when I challenged his view that philosophy of science is irrelevant by saying that it surely depended on what it was supposed to be relevant to, he retorted, “It’s not relevant to anything.”

But then came a small concession: “I’m not talking about political philosophy, I’m talking about the nature of the world.” But as if he had already granted too much, he added, “It’s clever, but totally irrelevant. Most of it seems to me just nonsense, it’s very hard to know what they’re talking about.

How then does Wolpert explain the fact that so many great minds over history have been seduced by a subject which he claims is totally irrelevant?

“That’s a very good question, and I think it’s a bit like religion. I’ve just been to a meeting on science and religion and I can’t understand what most people are talking about. They’re not unclever, they’re clever people but it just seems gobbledogook, babble.”

Wolpert is clearly not lacking in self-belief, but what makes him so confident it’s a failing of philosophy rather than himself that he finds it gobbledegook?

“Because it wouldn’t matter one hoot – science has done very well without any philosophy whatsoever. Take biology over the last 100 years – philosophy has had zero impact.”

Aren’t there people who think it might help at least with theoretical physics?

“I don’t think that it’s philosophy that will solve it in any way whatsoever, because it’s all about language and words, not science, and physics is about science.”

I couldn’t resist pointing out the contrast with the person interviewed in this slot last issue, the physicist Alan Sokal, who was rather more generous about the contribution philosophers make.

“I’m not at all generous about philosophy,” says Wolpert. “I think they’re very clever but have nothing useful to say whatsoever.”

Nothing useful for the practice of science by scientists, perhaps.

“No, nothing useful for the practice of anything,” he insists. “Perhaps morals politics and things like that, that may well be. John Stuart Mill and justice and so on, that’s important stuff, but about the nature of the world, absolutely nothing to say whatsoever.”

What about the nature of knowledge itself?

“Absolutely nothing useful to say at all.”

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