Getting Your Philosophical Ducks in a Row
| Article | |
|---|---|
| Title | Getting Your Philosophical Ducks in a Row |
| Author(s) | Glenn Borchardt |
| Published in | The Scientific Worldview |
| Date | 2026-03-09 |
| Subject area | Physics |
| Topics | philosophy of science, Big Bang, assumptions |
Read online | Read the full article |
Archived copy | Archived version |
| Retrieved | 2026-07-23 |
"Getting Your Philosophical Ducks in a Row" is an article by Glenn Borchardt published on 9 March 2026 on The Scientific Worldview.
Borchardt describes concluding, some fifty years ago, that the irrationality behind the Big Bang was philosophical rather than scientific — a matter of how data were interpreted rather than of the data themselves — and that most philosophy was no help because it was irrational too. He credits R. G. Collingwood's Essay on Metaphysics as the turning point, for its account of the presuppositions everyone holds without knowing it, and argues that stating one's own assumptions plainly is the precondition for reasoning about cosmology at all.