History and Philosophy of Science: Why it matters?

Let us start this article with the quote "Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind" (Imre Lakatos).

I can still remember the first time I heard the subject title 'History and Philosophy of Science' that I told myself that it is a boring subject. That all it can offer is to let students memorize the scientific events and the names of those weird philosophers.

Fast forward 10 years after. Everything changed.

In the past 5 years, I gradually developed an attachment with the subject. And in that attachment, there are just a mountain of learning that I gained reading various philosophies and histories of science. And the ultimate realization is that HPS matters.

According to Karl Jaspers, in philosophy there are more questions than answers and questions are more important than answers. The ancient Greeks are known to be the home of the greatest philosophers in our history (though there are equally significant philosophers across the globe that time). Their philosophies allow us to understand that what separates us from plants and animals is our rationality. We tend to ask questions regarding our existence, the events, the future and other issues that affect us. We have the likes of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and other philosophers. Some of their arguments may be obsolete but some makes sense even today.

Philosophers actually laid the foundations on the what and why people should think by asking questions and attempting to answer these questions. With humanity's quest of finding answers to an unending questions, we grow in wisdom. Thus by its simplest definition, philosophy is the love of wisdom.

While philosophy trains our minds to think, history teaches us what works and what won't work. We may talk about techniques, strategies, and decisions. Science itself have a rich history, from physical and natural events, even to events inside the laboratory (both the eureka and the heartbreak experiences). Science's greatest discoveries, such as Einstein's relativity, Newton's motion, Mendel's chromosomes, Hooke's cells, and other scientific greats, have a rich history to tell where the succeeding generations can learn.

So if we talk about why learning the essence of HPS, especially for science students and educators, we can say that it can train our minds to be critical of whatever scientific pursuits that we will be performing, and we will not be doing the same mistake in the past. With HPS, we might consider the significance, the impact and the ethics of the science that we are dealing with.

Therefore, if science have a specific goal in making the lives of humanity, historians and philosophers of science are there to ensure that science can achieve that goal.