In defense of philosophers as scientists
I've been getting a flurry of emails from revolutionary armchair scientists again, largely due to the recent post I wrote over at Starts With A Bang! Whenever several new theories arrives in my mailbox, they all start sounding the same. A bit of praise for my article/website/etc. and then a long diatribe on the errors of modern science followed by a link or attachment for the new and revolutionary idea. The genius of these new ideas are self declared, much along the lines of Vizzini in The Princess Bride, who declared that compared to him, the great philosophers were morons. Although its easy to see the absurdity in a self-declared scientific genius, it is similar to an attitude taken by some scientists with a dim view of philosophy. Plato, Aristotle and Socrates may have been deep thinkers, but philosophers are idiot scientists.