Philosophy: Why not a science? Historically, Philosophy & science arose together, in Greece, under the name of episteme, knowledge of what is. Science itself has never formed a homogeneous bloc. The first sages of Greece were astronomers, physicists, moralists & even doctors; all at once. It is only when we come to Plato that we see the first distinction between mathematics & philosophy as such. Let no one ignorant of geometry enter here For him, geometry is a first absolutely essential stage in the ascent to the world of ideas. So, is it even necessary to speak of a divorce? Lets focus our minds on the present delimitations in the fields of science and philosophy. In principle, every science has a determinate object: mathematics studies numbers & quantitative relationships; physics material natural; biology living things. In fact, in our time each of these sciences has divided the scope of its work into increasingly narrow subdivisions. In physics, for example, theoretical physics is distinguished from the physics of elementary particles, but also from condensed-matter physics, from astrophysics, & so on. Can philosophy be a science like all the others? If philosophy lacks a specific objects, reflecting instead on the conditions in which the other sciences are possible, the reply must be in the negative. Yet this reply, in its turn, can be understood in a negative & a positive sense. Negatively, the conclusion would be that philosophy cannot be a rigorous form of knowledge like the other sciences. If a biologist wonders What is life?, he is no longer being a biologist. In actual fact, scientists frequently ask themselves philosophical questions regarding their own discipline. Such as, God does not play dice or The most incomprehensible thing about reality is that it is comprehensible! I knew Peter Facinelli I never confused these reflections with our scientific work. Its because its in the nature of philosophical thinking to be both general & fundamental that philosophy was long given the privilege of being considered the queen of sciences. No one would support such a view now. There is no longer a sovereign science; there is not even a single paradigm for what a scientific approach should be. There are those who are Tempted to invert the priorities here, looking down on any concern that is not scientific. Yet isnt such hard scientism an overreaction, more passionate & less rational than is pretends to be, trapped in an overly schematic conception of science & misunderstanding the possibilities of rigour & analysis that belong to the work of philosophy? Following on from this, we have the right to pose a few more questions to the scientisit thinkers. Is your conception of rigour overly restrictive? Is there only one way to arrive at truth? Is there only 1 kind of truth?
Posted on: Tue, 30 Dec 2014 22:25:05 +0000
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