I strive to retain respect for philosophy and philosophers, really I do. Some of my best friends are philosophers. I’d hate to dismiss a whole area of intellectual endeavour as a sterile playground for clever wasters creating and demolishing pointless academic fashions. But you can probably tell I’m struggling hard right at this moment. It is all Nicholas Maxwell‘s fault. His entry into the heated debate on climate science rained blow after blow on my patience. I will resist, and will not damn all philosophy.
My second tactic is usually to ignore it (“No I can’t prove that chair exists. In fact it may not, because I can hear you talking out of your arse so clearly”). Life is too short. But in this case it got under my skin. This is partly because he picks on physics (hey! that’s me!) and partly because the climate debate Maxwell has stumbled ineptly into is real and important. And physicists have themselves stumbled fairly ineptly into this debate recently, as I discussed here.
Life and Physics 