Way back in 2014 popular astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson did a Nerdist Podcast in which he seemed critical and dismissive of philosophy. There was a response from the defenders of philosophy and some critics went so far as to accuse him of being a philistine. While philosophy’s most ancient enemy is poetry (according to Plato), science is usually up for a good fight.
Tyson presents a not unreasonable view of contemporary philosophy, namely that “asking deep questions” can cause a “pointless delay in your progress” in engaging “this whole big world of unknowns out there.” To avoid such pointless delays, Tyson advised scientists to respond to such questioners by saying, “I’m moving on, I’m leaving you behind, and you can’t even cross the street because you’re distracted by deep questions you’ve asked of yourself. I don’t have time for that.”
While I wrote about this back in 2014, it is wise to revisit my views on the matter.
The idea that a scientist might see philosophy as useless (or worse) is consistent with my own experiences in academics. Since 2014, STEM has risen and the humanities have been under constant attack. As one example, as of Fall 2026 Florida A&M University will no longer have a distinct philosophy (and religion) major. I will still be teaching philosophy, but in a new combined program made up of philosophy, history, religion, and African-American studies. We are, of course, lucky that we are still permitted to even exist. To be fair and balanced, a case can be made against philosophy. And the concern that the deep questioning of philosophy can cause pointless delays has merit and is well worth considering. After all, if philosophy is useless or even detrimental, then this would be worth knowing.
The main bite of this criticism is that philosophical questioning is detrimental to progress: a scientist who gets caught in these deep questions, it seems, would be like a kayaker caught in a strong eddy: they would be spinning around rather than zipping down the river. This concern also has practical merit. To use an analogy outside of science, consider a committee meeting aimed at determining the curriculum for state schools. This committee has an objective to achieve and asking questions is a reasonable way to begin. But imagine that people start raising deep questions about the meaning of terms such as “humanities” or “science” and become too interested in the semantics. This sidetracking will create a needlessly long meeting and little or no progress. After all, the goal is to determine the curriculum, and deep questions will only slow down progress towards this practical goal. Likewise, if a scientist is endeavoring to sort out the nature of the cosmos, deep questions can be a similar trap: she will be asking ever deeper questions rather than gathering data and doing math to answer her shallower questions.
Philosophy, as Socrates showed with his Socratic method, can endlessly generate deep questions. Questions such as “what is the nature of the universe?”, “what is time?”, “what is space?”, “what is good?”, “what’s for lunch?”, and so on. Also, as Socrates showed, for each answer given, philosophy can generate more questions. It is also often claimed that this shows that philosophy has no answers as every alleged answer can be questioned and only raises more questions. Thus, philosophy seems to be bad for scientists.
A key assumption is that science is different from philosophy in a key way—while it raises questions, proper science focuses on questions that can be answered or, at the very least, it gets down to the business of answering them and (eventually) abandons a question if it turns out to be a distracting deep question. Thus, science provides answers and makes progress. This, obviously enough, ties into another stock attack on philosophy: philosophy makes no progress and is useless.
One obvious reason philosophy is seen as not making progress and as useless is that when enough progress is made on a deep question, it often becomes a matter for science rather than philosophy. For example, ancient Greek philosophers, such as Democritus, speculated about the composition of the universe and its size. These were considered deep philosophical questions. Even Newton considered himself a natural philosopher. He has, of course, been claimed by the scientists (many of whom conveniently overlook the role of God in his theories). These questions are now claimed by physicists, such as Tyson, who now see them as scientific rather than philosophical questions.
Thus, it is unfair to claim that philosophy does not solve problems or make progress. When philosophy makes progress in an area, that area often becomes a science and is no longer considered philosophy. However, progress is impossible without the deep questions and the work done by philosophers before the field was claimed to be a science.
At this point, some might grudgingly concede that philosophy did make some valuable contributions in the past, but philosophy is now an eddy rather than the current of progress.
Philosophy has been here before—back in the days of Socrates the Sophists contended that philosophical speculation was valueless and that people should focus on getting things done—that is, achieving success. Fortunately for contemporary science, philosophy survived and philosophers kept asking those deep questions that seemed so valueless then.
While some might see philosophy as a curious relic of the past, it is worth considering that some of the deep, distracting philosophical questions are well worth pursuing. Much as how Democritus’ deep philosophical questions led to the astrophysics that a fellow named Neil loves so much.
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