What happens at the end of science? Philosophy?
It is the kind of question that can pause a conversation. Not because science fails, and not because philosophy is waiting at the edge of the laboratory to correct it, but because every discipline, if you follow it far enough, begins to run into its own foundations. What counts as truth? What can be known? What is real? What do numbers describe, and what do they leave out? At a certain depth, questions begin to blend between fields of study.
In the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, a group of students has chosen to move between science and the humanities. Their schedules are crowded; their degree plans are complicated. But they are trying to make room for the fact that curiosity does not always arrive in a single form.
Of the roughly 12,517 undergrads in LAS, more than 1,000 are pursuing degrees in more than one major, according to the LAS Student Academic Affairs Office. I spoke with a few of them to learn more about their thoughts and college experience. One of those three was Eryn Van Wijk, who is majoring in astrophysics and philosophy.
Two majors that speak to each other
That same faith in learning—in learning widely, seriously, and without apology—runs through Eryn Van Wijk’s story. A junior majoring in astrophysics and philosophy, they thought they would become a freelance artist for a long time, though Eryn has always been drawn to science.
Eryn entered Illinois with their major undeclared. Later, they added astrophysics, and then philosophy.
The result is a course of study that may sound exhausting. But Eryn describes it with a kind of relief.
If they were doing only STEM, or only humanities, they said, they would burn out. The double major is difficult, but it is also what keeps Eryn intellectually awake.
“It's good for keeping a sustained level of energy throughout the semester, which in some ways makes the academic part of it a lot easier, but in other ways it's a lot harder because the pacing on both majors is a lot slower since I'm having to balance both of them. It's not like I'm finishing one degree and then getting the other one.”
Double majoring, especially across very different fields, can leave students slightly out of sync with everyone around them. They do not always move through a major in the same sequence as their classmates. They miss the repetition that turns classmates into familiar faces and familiar faces into friends.
“It’s socially challenging to be a double major,” Eryn concluded.
Their solution is deliberate effort: talk to people, go to office hours, join clubs, invest in relationships that will not happen automatically.
And yet Eryn remains deeply convinced that their two majors speak to one another. Many philosophy courses, they noted, are cross-listed with other disciplines. But the deeper overlap is in the habits of mind each field demands. Philosophy and astrophysics both ask students to begin with fundamental questions and reason outward. They are both concerned, in their own ways, with first principles.
This is where I asked them: Do you think that the end of science is philosophy?
For Eryn, science, when followed all the way down, begins to resemble philosophy again. The modern sciences emerged from it. The academy itself grew from questions that were once all housed under philosophy. Even the degree title PhD, used by virtually all disciplines, carries that history: doctor of philosophy.
“Philosophy has gotten us here,” Eryn said.
That belief helps explain Eryn’s interest in science communication, an area where their majors seem mutually illuminating. Eryn is on the board of the Astronomical Society.
“I would really enjoy being an observatory curator or working for an observatory sometime in my future and just doing public outreach and science communication because I think it's so important that we communicate science properly to the public and make it accessible in ways that don't diminish its legitimacy,” Eryn said.
If students are interested in exploring a double major or exploring career possibilities, they can reach out to the astronomy advisor at astronomy-advising@illinois.edu or find more information at LAS Career Services.
Read about two other students majoring in more than one subject