This post asks about a quotation from here.
Evaluate this idea:
The great methodological activity that can be found in the field of life sciences is a palpable reality that can be easily corroborated. For this, it is enough to take a look at the bibliography and authors of many articles published in monthly leading life science journals, such as Evolution, Systematic Zoology or The Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics. There, it is common to see names such as Popper, Nagel, Hempel, Kuhn, Koyré, and others recurrently mentioned. Many times, the authors are also philosophers. This is an outstanding academic fact in natural science publications. I think that we will hardly be able to see so much philosophy and philosophers in journals of physics or chemistry. Certainly, this activity could be used against those who still think that philosophy of science normatively oriented is old fashioned or even obsolete. In other words, classical methodology is alive in the fields of life sciences.
Short answer: the idea is basically on the right track (especially about biology), but it overstates the contrast with physics/chemistry and slightly romanticizes “classical methodology”.
I’ll break it down.
1. Is there really that much methodological/philosophical work in life-science journals?
Yes, especially in evolution, systematics, and ecology.
You can literally find core biology journals publishing papers with Popper’s name in the title and engaging directly with philosophy of science:
- Systematic Zoology / Systematic Biology has had papers like “Karl Popper, Verifiability, and Systematic Zoology” (Kitts 1977) and later “Popper and Systematics” (Rieppel 2003). (OUP Academic) These are not in philosophy journals – they’re in a leading systematics journal.
- Rieppel’s “Hypothetico-deductivism in systematics: fact or fiction?” (2008) explicitly discusses Hempel, Popper, hypothetico-deductivism, and evidential relevance in the context of cladistics – again in a zoology/systematics venue. (SciELO)
- Systematics and species concepts are a hotbed of conceptual debate: classic systematics journals carry papers like Wiley’s “Evolutionary species concept reconsidered” and de Queiroz’s “Species concepts and species delimitation” in Systematic Biology, treating issues (what is a species? what counts as an individual?) that are as much philosophical as empirical. (OUP Academic)
- David Hull, who is primarily known as a philosopher of biology, published influential papers such as “Are species really individuals?” in Systematic Zoology and “Individuality and selection” in Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics – both explicitly conceptual/methodological pieces, in mainstream biology venues. (SpringerLink)
And this isn’t just a few isolated old papers. Recent work in ecology still invokes Popper and Kuhn:
- A 2024 paper literally titled “Popperian ecology is a delusion” surveys 50 years of ecologists using Popper’s falsificationism to make normative claims about how ecology should be done, before arguing that this whole Popperian framing is misguided. (PMC)
- Debates in ecology about “paradigms” and theory change explicitly cite Kuhn and his terminology. For example, Graham’s “On the evolution of ecological ideas: paradigms and…” in Ecology and later work on “beyond Kuhnian paradigms” in ecology show that Kuhnian ideas are part of ecologists’ own self-understanding. (JSTOR)
More broadly, reference works describe philosophy of biology as a rapidly expanding field tightly connected to actual biological practice:
- The Stanford Encyclopedia entry says philosophy of biology has developed rapidly since the 1970s and is now a mainstream part of philosophy of science. (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
- A modern textbook overview notes that philosophy of biology is “concerned with explanatory concepts in evolution, genetics, and ecology,” stressing its close relation to those sciences rather than being purely armchair. (ScienceDirect)
So the author’s basic empirical point – that life sciences, especially evolution, systematics, and ecology, are full of explicit methodological and philosophical reflection, often naming Popper, Kuhn, etc., and sometimes written by philosophers – is very well supported.
2. Is biology unique here, compared to physics and chemistry?
This is where the claim starts to overshoot.
There is a difference in typical publication venues:
- In biology, conceptual and philosophical work often appears inside mainstream biological journals (Evolution, Systematic Biology, Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics / Ecology, Evolution and Systematics, etc.).
- In physics and chemistry, similar work is more often pushed into dedicated philosophy-of-X venues rather than general physics/chemistry journals.
For instance:
- Philosophy of physics is now a big, institutionalized field with its own society and flagship journal, Philosophy of Physics, aimed at philosophers and physicists interested in the foundations of physics. (Philosophy of Physics Society)
- Nobel laureate P. J. E. Peebles wrote “The physicist’s philosophy of physics” (2024), explicitly reflecting on the implicit philosophy guiding physics research; but he published it via arXiv and related venues rather than in, say, Physical Review Letters. (arXiv)
- Philosophy of chemistry has emerged more recently as an “interdisciplinary field,” with Scerri noting that philosophical study of physics and biology was historically far more established than that of chemistry and that many chemists viewed philosophy with suspicion. (American Chemical Society Publications)
So the contrast the author feels – “we see philosophers and Popper/Kuhn cited in biology journals more than in physics or chemistry journals” – is plausible. But it’s not that physics and chemistry lack philosophical engagement; it’s that the boundary between science journals and philosophy journals is drawn differently.
If we rewrote their claim more cautiously, it would be something like:
In biology, especially evolution and systematics, methodological and philosophical debates are more often conducted within mainstream scientific journals, whereas in physics and chemistry analogous debates more often happen in separate philosophy-of-physics or philosophy-of-chemistry venues.
That’s a softer claim, and it lines up better with the actual landscape.
3. Does this show that “classical methodology” is still alive?
Here the author is basically right, but the picture is mixed.
Evidence that classical methodology is “alive” in life sciences:
- Systematists explicitly use Popper’s falsificationism and Hempelian hypothetico-deductivism as normative frameworks for how to choose phylogenetic hypotheses, what counts as evidence, etc. Rieppel’s work on hypothetico-deductivism in systematics is a clear example. (SciELO)
- An overview paper on Popper and systematics lists numerous systematics articles in Systematic Zoology/Systematic Biology that take Popper as a central authority: titles like “Karl Popper, Verifiability, and Systematic Zoology,” “Probability, Parsimony, and Popper,” and “Philosophical conjectures and their refutation” make this very explicit. (ResearchGate)
- In ecology, the very fact that ecologists have spent decades trying to criticize or reform their discipline in Popperian terms – and that a 2024 article can still be titled “Popperian ecology is a delusion” – shows that Popper’s criteria for demarcation and falsifiability are still taken seriously enough to argue about. (PMC)
So yes: normatively oriented philosophy of science – the idea that philosophers (and philosophically minded scientists) can say how science ought to be done – is very much alive in the life sciences.
However, it’s not simply a matter of “classical methodology” being preserved untouched. A lot of this work is actually:
- Critical of naive Popperianism: Hull’s “The Use and Abuse of Sir Karl Popper” in Biology & Philosophy and more recent critiques argue that straightforward falsificationism doesn’t fit biological practice very well, even though it remains a reference point. (SpringerLink)
- Embedded in newer philosophical approaches: pluralism about species concepts and levels of selection, focus on practice, model-based explanation, etc. Contemporary philosophy of biology talks not just about Popper, Hempel, and Nagel, but also about issues like the meaning of “function,” the concept of gene, homology, individuality, and so on. (MDPI)
So the right conclusion is:
- Classical methodology is not obsolete – it is continually re-used, criticized, and reworked in biology.
- But it is integrated into a more pluralistic, practice-sensitive philosophy of science, not simply followed as a rigid recipe.
4. How I’d refine the original idea
If I were editing the passage you gave, I’d keep its core insight but tone down and update a few parts:
-
Acknowledge the name changes and scope of journals:
- Systematic Zoology is now Systematic Biology, explicitly focused on theory and methods in systematics and evolution. (Wikipedia)
- Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics is now Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics.
-
Soften the contrast with physics and chemistry: Instead of “we will hardly be able to see so much philosophy in physics/chemistry journals,” say something like:
In physics and chemistry, methodological and philosophical debate tends to be channeled into specialized philosophy-of-physics and philosophy-of-chemistry venues, whereas in the life sciences such debate more often appears directly in mainstream journals.
-
Clarify what “classical methodology” means today: Emphasize that Popper, Nagel, Hempel, Kuhn, etc., are active interlocutors in current debates, but often as foils or starting points, not final authorities. The life sciences show that normative philosophy of science persists, but in a more self-critical and historically informed form.
Bottom line
- The empirical observation – that evolutionary biology, systematics, and ecology journals are full of explicit references to Popper, Kuhn, and philosophical methodology, often with philosopher-authors – is well supported.
- The contrast with physics and chemistry is directionally right but too sharp: those fields also have rich philosophy, just usually in different venues.
- The normative conclusion is justified: far from being obsolete, normatively oriented philosophy of science is alive and intertwined with the life sciences – it’s just matured beyond a straightforward “classical methodology vs. practice” story.
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