The Lonely Pipette : helping scientists do better science

TLP #24 : The untold power of philosophy - Thomas Pradeu

June 14, 2023 Jonathan Weitzman & Renaud Pourpre Season 2 Episode 14
The Lonely Pipette : helping scientists do better science
TLP #24 : The untold power of philosophy - Thomas Pradeu
Show Notes

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

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More about the soundtrack :
Music by Amaria - Lovely Swindler https://soundcloud.com/amariamusique/