This week, we meet our first philosopher guest - Thomas Pradeu tells us what scientist can learn from philosophers
- Thomas shares his journey navigating from philosophy to immunology and biology
- He explains the difference between ‘philosophy IN biology’ compared to ‘philosophy OF biology’
- He mentions ‘mutual ignorance’ - that scientists often don’t know about philosophers who would be interested in their science
- Thomas argues that philosophers should be brought in at the beginning of a project rather than at the end. He describes his model for embedding philosophers within a biology research environment
- He gives lots of specific examples, from immunology and beyond, where philosophers made an impact on science by intervening upstream
- Thomas stresses the importance of challenging the foundations (in the lab and at home)
- He also stresses the importance of reading every day
- Thomas talks honestly about the difficulties of improving life-work balance and gender balance in academia
- Thomas is proud of his success in creating examples of the Philosophy IN Biology networks as a model for interdisciplinary collaboration
He mentioned these researchers/philosophers
To find out more about Thomas visit his websites or follow him on Twitter
To find out more about Renaud and Jonathan :
More about the soundtrack :
Music by Amaria - Lovely Swindler https://soundcloud.com/amariamusique/
