Abstract
Philosophers of science are increasingly arguing for the importance of doing scientifically- and socially-engaged work, suggesting that we need to reduce barriers to extra-disciplinary engagement and broaden our impact. Yet, we currently lack empirical data to inform these discussions, leaving a number of important questions unanswered. How common is it for philosophers of science to engage other communities, and in what ways are they engaging? What barriers are most prevalent when it comes to broadly disseminating one’s work or collaborating with others? To what extent do philosophers of science actually value an engaged approach? Our project addresses this gap in our collective knowledge by providing empirical data regarding the state of philosophy of science today. We report the results of a survey of 299 philosophers of science about their attitudes towards and experiences with engaging those outside the discipline. Our data suggest that a significant majority of philosophers of science think it is important for non-philosophers to read and make use of their work; most are engaging with communities outside the discipline; and many think philosophy of science, as a discipline, has an obligation to ensure it has a broader impact. Interestingly, however, many of these same philosophers believe engaged work is generally undervalued in the discipline. We think these findings call for cautious optimism on the part of those who value engaged work—while there seems to be more interest in engaging other communities than many assume, significant barriers still remain.
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Notes
An important exception to this, which we discuss towards the end of the paper, is a recent study by Valerie Tiberius on the value and “well-being” of philosophy (Tiberius 2017). In addition, Turri (2016) and Frodeman (2013) conducted surveys of philosophers and philosophy departments, respectively, though neither asked philosophers about their experiences with or attitudes towards engaged work.
Our survey asked participants about their views towards engaging scientific communities, policymakers, lay communities, and others; however, given the large amount of data we collected, we primarily focus on responses related to scientifically-engaged work in this paper. Where appropriate, we also report responses related to other types of engaged work, especially to demonstrate relative interests and experiences with respect to such work.
One of the reasons for using a more restrictive set of journals is that the views and experiences of those who identify as philosophers of science may be substantially different from those who identify as other types of philosophers, and our main aim was to understand how philosophers of science view engaged work and what sorts of barriers they face in disseminating their work to audiences outside philosophy.
The response rate was considerably lower for the larger sampling frame, which included anyone who authored or co-authored a paper in one of the seven journals any time since their inception. Those authors include many researchers who are not philosophers, philosophers of science who are deceased, and many who published as graduate students but did not stay in academia (and thus were more difficult to track down). Thus, we think the response rate for the membership-based sampling frame is a better rate to use.
Frodeman (2013) surveyed departments rather than individuals and thus doesn’t provide demographic data. Turri (2016) asked about gender but not rank. Tiberius (2017) doesn’t include demographic information in her paper (she provides it an a separate report, but we decided not to use that data as it was unpublished at the time of this writing).
Turri (2016) surveyed philosophers more generally:16.6% of his respondents identified as female and 81.3% as male.
In preparation for the statistical analysis, responses were coded on a numeric scale, with the most negative response being 1 and each gradation being one higher. This allowed us to include such responses in our regressions and will help explain the interpretation of the results.
Note that we only report responses for those who answered the question. For the dissemination section, the response rate for each question was 89–98%.
For a detailed discussion of the types of impacts philosophers of science cite, what evidence they use to assess it, and what types of pathways are more likely to enhance impact, see Plaisance et al. (2019). Notably, a number of philosophers of science we interviewed for that study mentioned the impact they have had via teaching, lending support to the idea that many philosophers’ broader impacts likely happen through teaching (e.g., Schliesser 2015).
We could not calculate a non-response rate for this question; thus, these numbers may actually be slightly higher. On the other hand, if selection bias occurred, then the numbers may be slightly lower than what we report here.
While post-tenure respondents were more likely to have co-authored with scientists or engineers than their non-tenured counterparts (62% vs. 41%, respectively), even the proportion of non-tenured respondents was still higher than we expected.
Note that these numbers represent the percentages of those who responded to the question. Our response rate for the questions about barriers was about 85% of those who completed the survey.
The response rates for questions about perceived barriers were lower than they were for other questions (roughly 75–80%, depending on the particular barrier). Again, note that the numbers represented in the figure only include those who responded.
Our response rate was about 95–97.5% for each question we asked.
It is interesting to note that identifying as a feminist philosopher of science was associated with stronger endorsements of several goals, but was not associated with a higher likelihood of having tried to disseminate one’s work more broadly or how often one collaborated with others.
Frodeman and Briggle (2016), for instance, claim that “field philosophy” is in the minority. While it seems that their claim is in tension with our findings, it is possible that field philosophy captures a stronger form of engagement than what we asked about in the survey. This suggests a need for further work to tease apart different types of engagement, which we have begun to do by asking survey respondents to list different ways of collaborating with others.
Tiberius’s paper is based on her Presidential Address at the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association meeting in 2017, which can be freely accessed online: https://blog.apaonline.org/2017/04/11/the-well-being-of-philosophy/.
We thank Carla Fehr for this particular phrasing.
There are exceptions to this for the lucky few who are trained in and hired by departments that value and reward engaged work, exemplified by institutions like Michigan State University and the University of Waterloo.
One of the goals of our interviews is to identify best practices for doing engaged philosophy of science and to provide specific case studies from which others can learn.
Philosophers are not limited to broader engagement via their research. As mentioned earlier, one of the more effective pathways to impact is via the classroom (see Plaisance et al. 2019 for a detailed discussion about the best avenues for broader impacts).
There are several studies documenting the extra burden placed on women and racial minorities with respect to service work and various types of invisible labor. Joseph and Hirshfield (2011) discuss this in terms of the ‘cultural taxation’ of faculty of color, while Pyke (2015) examines the ways institutional structures make it difficult for women to ‘just say no to service’.
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Acknowledgements
We wish to extend our gratitude to all those who took the time to participate in our study; without them, this research would not have been possible. We also appreciate the input we received on the study design and draft manuscript, especially from Carla Fehr and two anonymous reviewers. This research was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada (Grant No. 430-2016-01137) through an Insight Development Grant. It has been reviewed by and received ethics clearance through a University of Waterloo Research Ethics Committee.
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Plaisance, K.S., Graham, A.V., McLevey, J. et al. Show me the numbers: a quantitative portrait of the attitudes, experiences, and values of philosophers of science regarding broadly engaged work. Synthese 198, 4603–4633 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02359-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-019-02359-7