I find much to agree with in Wayne's post. I particularly agree with the point that "Our educational system isn’t particularly well suited for training philosophers who can engage seriously with the sciences." I don't, of course, know what can be done about this, since I don't think the solution can be to spend less time learning philosophy and more time learning, e.g. physics.
But I also have two points on which I think I need to respond to Wayne.
First, if he wants to call philosophers, (including maybe one or more from this blog) onto the carpet for being childish in their responses to Tyson, it's a bit misleading to only quote Tyson's final, most conciliatory, and most sensible remarks. That was not the tone that, e.g., our own Jon Cogburn was responding to. He was responding to what Tyson said in a much more wide-reaching forum, and to the bullying tone in which he did it.
Second, there is a danger, which I worry Wayne is falling into, when we approach these kinds of issues. That's to compare the very best acheivements of Physics with the whole range of output of Philosophy. Yes, we can all think of cases where philosophy got "bogged down in questions that are either pointless or meaningless." But so, of course, do all of the sciences. I bet more money got spent on studying faster than light-speed travelling neutrinos than has been spent on all of philosophy research in the last 20 years (every philosopher of physics I know predicted correctly how that episode would turn out.) And I doubt there is any part of philosophy that is any more pointless than all the scientific research on differences in cognitive abilities between different races and sexes. If you are going to disparage one field compared to another, compare best against best, or all against all, and do it on a per capita basis. Done properly, its hard to know with any degree of confidence whether the value of philosophy's outout will measure up to that of physics over the last n years.
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