[TGS]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Does anyone think philosophy could benefit by having popularizers in the way scientific knowledge has become more widespread through the efforts of folks like Sagan, Gould, Hawking, Asimov, et al.? And would any professional philosopher who attempted to make philosophy available to that masses suffer the same fate as the scientists who are belittled by their colleagues for their efforts to bring scientific literacy to the masses?

There are popularizers - Alain de Botton, Mark Rowlands/, and even Bertrand Russell spring immediately to mind.

Both Mark Rowlands and Alain de Botton are professional philosophers - in the sense that they earn their living from teaching in universities and writing about philosophy. Most of what they write is written for other philosophers - and their popularizing books are not the same thing as what they teach to their students or write in academic journals.

I don't think the likes of Hawking are belittled by their academic peers, but it has to be recognized that what their popularizing books do is popularize - and in order to popularize they have to simplify, and in order to simplify they have to be less precise - which is why popular versions of science or philosophy don't have the rigour of, and are not taken seriously by people in the academic study of, those disciplines.

Kenny said:

I think philosophy might benefit, but would humanity benefit?

First do no harm! Doing philosophy isn't drilling oil, isn't making weapons, isn't exploiting people in poor countries, isn't destroying the ozone layer, isn't leading to the extinction of any animal species, isn't contaminating the earth with radioactivity. It's not alone in not doing those things - but there are are lot worse thing for humanity than philosophy.


FlorenceArt said:

How can philosophy be technical, when its purpose is to help us make sense of the world and ourselves? This concerns everyone. It's not something that can be delegated to a bunch of technocrats that will make sense of the world for us, is it?

Most academic philosophy has got nothing to do with how to live a better life, (it's not unique in that, most of what goes on in the humanities and social science, and quite a lot of what goes on in natural and theoretical science, is of no practical value - that doesn't mean it shouldn't be done though). I guess Alain de Botton is an exception to that - he does think philosophy - both as a process and in terms of its products - has the potential to make human life "better".