/lit/ - Literature

"The so-called philosophers who still survive in the world (just as fortune-tellers and witch-doctors survive) argue that a scientist cannot carry on his business without some grounding in metaphysical theory, but for this there is no evidence whatsoever; on the contrary, the career of almost any competent scientist proves that it is false. All the metaphysical equipment he really needs in contained in common sense, and he shares it with carpenters and bricklayers. Whenever he steps beyond it he gets into difficulties, and very often he comes dramatically to grief. Some of the great glories of science, including many who have adorned the non-physical sciences, have been as innocent of metaphysical theory as so many police lieutenants. The business of a man of science in this world is not to speculate and dogmatize, but to demonstrate. To be sure, he sometimes needs the aid of hypothesis, but hypothesis, at best, is only a pragmatic stop-gap, made use of transiently because all the necessary facts are not yet known. The appearance of a new one in contempt of it destroys it instantly. At its most plausible and useful it simply represents an attempt to push common sense an inch or two over the borders of the known. At its worst it is only idle speculation, and no more respectable than the soaring of metaphysicians."
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956)

So why do we need philosophical babbling again when science and common sense can explain everything?