A famous debate in the philosophy of science is the demarcation problem. That is, how do we separate science from pseudo-science? The classic example of this debate is how to provide a definition of science that is able to distinguish say physics from astrology, or creationism from evolution. I'll not get into that debate, but I bring it up because of an interesting similar problem that cropped up in a post by Richard Chappell over at Philosophy Etc. One of the tangents in his post and the comments was about when a philosophy because a science. That is, can we offer a demarcation principle to distinguish what is science from what is philosophy?
I don't think we can. Clearly many things in theory work within science parallels philosophy. They are largely ungrounded empirically, often being intrinsically untestable. Superstring theory is a perfect example, despite some recent claims to be able to test in theory some aspects. Some scientists skeptical of supstrings will even call it philosophy and not science. But, going the other way, there have also be at least tendencies in philosophy to try and "naturalize it." I'm here thinking of Quine's naturalized philosophy as well as perhaps other figures. And, by the same measure, some philosophers of science such as Kuhn and Feyerabend have perhaps problematized science such that all science seems to have more in common with philosophy than scientists might like.
I don't really want to get into where those sorts of debates are at the moment. If anything when you start to throw in Continental philosophy, we see that the line between science and philosophy is at best blurry among many views. Groups on both sides seem to launch skirmishes to bring the other side over to their way of doing things. But I want to consider a different issue.
I wonder if the distinctions end up being more about diversity among scholars and/or scientists. For instance at the time when science started breaking off from philosophy, most scholars did extensive work in both. Further they brought to bear their training and thinking from one problem into their work on others. Thus we aren't surprised when Descartes blurs the line between his physics and his philosophy. Likewise we find the same thing in Spinoza or Leibniz. By the time there is a distinction between philosophy and science I think it has more to do with the fact that philosophers tend not to do work in problems that scientists were working on and vice versa. Thus frequently someone doing work in epistemology would focus on problems related to epistemology, with occasional jumps into mind problems, or metaphysics. Likewise someone doing work in field theories might also do some thermodynamics, but far less work in say epistemology.
Of course there were people who worked in both fields. There always have been. But when one considers how the disciplines evolved, I think that the questions simply became more and more unrelated. Disciplines thus diverged. A person teaching in a physics department simply wouldn't likely be teaching epistemology or even publishing in formal philosophy.
There were exceptions. For instance one of my favorite philosophers, C. S. Peirce was primarily a physicist, but his work in philosophy is by far his greatest achievement. (Although I suspect much of that was due to being shut out of Harvard for political reasons, and thus having to publish on more philosophical topics) But William James certainly did both, although at that time the divide between psychology and philosophy hadn't arisen, the way it had between physics and philosophy.
Even when scientists became far more theoretical, such as with the initial years of field theories in the 19th century, or even Einstein's work on relativity, they tended not to engage with philosophers as much. Well, Einstein did apparently study Spinoza as a kind of kindred spirit. But I think a lot of that came to the forefront in his later days when he was critiquing quantum mechanics on what must be admitted to as philosophical grounds.
So is there a divide between the two? I think the divide is largely imaginary. I think it an artifact of how people publish and how universities tend to assign value towards publication. While I'm not sure, I suspect many physics departments won't look upon publications in philosophy they way they will look upon publication in physics. There will be a middle ground in areas in the philosophy of science. But generally there are only a few slots for people like that, and they are expected to focus in on that. (Correct me if I'm wrong)
That is, I think that the supposed divide is less a divide than simply a manifestation of the way modern academics tends to focus on narrow topics. Indeed it often does this in a fashion that can be myopic at times. But that's a whole other conversation.
Over at Dinner Table Don'ts they have a hilarious anecdote about Tarski which I think illustrates the problem. Tarski was at Waterloo giving a lecture in the math department. He asked some of the math folks if they'd mentioned his lecture to the philosophy department. They were confused about why on earth philosophers would be interested in hearing a mathematician speak.
Over at Studi Galileiani he has an interesting take on the above.
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