Episode 15 of the Sympathetic People podcast, in which we discuss careers in science and ask questions about what exactly “science” is anyway.

It’s undeniably a problem that scientific research is underfunded. PhD students represent cheap labour for laboratories and universities, but how many of them can find a job when they complete their degrees? How many young researchers ever achieve job security? How does science stack up against other career paths in these regards?

Another core issue we discuss is what “science” really is. Many people seem to believe that science is fundamentally different from the arts and humanities, but “science” is just an outgrowth of empiricism. Empiricism is a branch of epistemology and epistemology is a branch of philosophy – science isn’t clearly separable from philosophy, it’s part of it! Not only this, but differences between the sciences and the arts, or between science and ancient traditions of myth-making and storytelling are greatly exaggerated.

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