is philosophy a science

General chit-chat

Moderators: AMod, iMod

osgart
Posts: 517
Joined: Mon Oct 10, 2016 7:38 am

is philosophy a science

Post by osgart »

or can i put on a white robe sit on a rock, or on marble steps and do philosophy and call myself a philosopher? Socrates didnt go to school for it! He invented it .
User avatar
HexHammer
Posts: 3354
Joined: Sat May 14, 2011 8:19 pm
Location: Denmark

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by HexHammer »

No, it's cozy chat and largely waste of time.
haribol acharya
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 11:35 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by haribol acharya »

Philosophy is not a science. Where science ends philosophy begins
Skip
Posts: 2820
Joined: Tue Aug 09, 2011 1:34 pm

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by Skip »

Where philosophy got bogged down, tracking the elusive Heffelump, science kept slogging on and came up with weird shit like GPS and post-it notes.
Some of it is actually pretty good.

Geez, I miss Leo!
Dalek Prime
Posts: 4922
Joined: Tue Apr 14, 2015 4:48 am
Location: Living in a tree with Polly.

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by Dalek Prime »

Skip wrote:Where philosophy got bogged down, tracking the elusive Heffelump, science kept slogging on and came up with weird shit like GPS and post-it notes.
Some of it is actually pretty good.

Geez, I miss Leo!
Funny, I was just saying the same thing about Leo.

Philosophy isn't based on reproducing results, as it goes deeper than science ever will. Perhaps not as productively as GPS and post-its, but, well, what the fuck. Nothings perfect (save the void).
thedoc
Posts: 6473
Joined: Thu Aug 30, 2012 4:18 pm

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by thedoc »

Science and Philosophy are answering different questions, and to try to make them answer the same question, is a fools errand. Science answers the How? question, and philosophy, along with religion, answers the Why? question, or at least tries to.
User avatar
Greta
Posts: 4389
Joined: Sat Aug 08, 2015 8:10 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by Greta »

Skip and Dalek, speaking of Leo, here's a piece from his manifesto that's relevant to the thread, which will surely bring back memories:
Once I’d arrived at the conclusion that physics made no sense I quickly came to another one which was predicated on my growing love for philosophy. It seemed impossible to me that our cosmos could be the complex mathematical entity which our physicists were claiming it to be. If philosophy were to have any validity at all it was simply inconceivable that the comprehension of our cosmos would not be the birthright of Everyman.

Whatever our universe might be, she could not be any of the host of impossible entities speculated about in the popular science literature, because these absurd universes are only comprehensible to a handful of super-geeks who speak in tongues, the fascinating but inscrutable language of mathematics. I felt that the comprehension of our universe should be intuitively obvious to anybody, and I decided that this assumption would form the central plank of my entire philosophy, and thus of my life’s quest. The philosophy of the bloody obvious was born and named and I could clearly define its objectives. Either I would find the problem with physics and make our cosmos comprehensible or I would die in the attempt.

... One might well wonder why I never took up physics as a career but I somehow knew that joining this priesthood would be a mistake. Although mathematically competent I was never an adept and I didn’t kid myself that I could ever be one. Furthermore, my arrogance notwithstanding, I was never self-delusional and I knew damn well that these physicist blokes were in all likelihood a hell of a lot smarter than me. If the problem of physics were actually a problem of physics then they would have found it long ago, and for almost a century after realising that they had such a problem they hadn’t even managed to lay a glove on it.

I didn’t for a moment entertain the possibility that I could do what they had been unable to do with their magnificent mathematical toys. As I saw it, this had to be a problem of a different nature which required a radically different approach. The problem of physics had to be a conceptual problem, and conceptual problems are accessible to reason. This was a task for a Natural Philosopher, for whom conceptual problems accessible to reason are all in a day’s work.

For a Natural Philosopher the problem with physics took only about a nanosecond to discover, because 20th century physics is riddled with metaphysical absurdities. It is inconsistent with the teachings of all of the major philosophical schools of both east and west, dating back to the pre-Socratics and beyond. Its models make several basic metaphysical blunders by conflating the physical with the non-physical, and also by conflating a physical model with its mathematical representation.

These blunders went largely unpunished by the philosophical community when they were first presented to a bewildered public. The history of 20th century physics will be much written about from many different angles, but the question which puzzles me the most is this: Where were the philosophers while all this was going on? The navel-gazers were safely locked away in their ivory towers writing learned dissertations, which nobody ever took the trouble to read, about the meaning of other people’s words, which nobody ever took the trouble to try and understand for themselves. So intimidated were they by the mathematical virtuosity of the geeks that barely a one of them had the courage to poke his head above the parapet to voice a word of protest.

Meanwhile the physicists, purporting to be on the same mission as the philosophers to discover the nature of physical reality, were parading around a cock-and-bull story about the nature of space and time which back in Plato’s day would have had the whole fucking lot of them sold into slavery. Hardly a squeak of outrage was heard from the hallowed halls of philosophical academia about this gratuitous insult to millennia of diligent scholarship.
surreptitious57
Posts: 4257
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:09 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by surreptitious57 »


Philosophy is not science as such but science is a branch of philosophy namely empiricism
haribol acharya
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 11:35 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by haribol acharya »

Philosophy rests to a certain extent on postulations and needs scientific approvals. Today it has a weaker role and since the department of philosophy is not fascinating as it used to be a few decades ago. Man is a curious being and he wants to be answered about the whys and the question like why we are here goes unanswered and we have to somehow take refuge in philosophy. One fascinating part of philosophy is it takes on religions heavily to answer some of our questions which will otherwise remain unanswered. Therefore philosophy is a little bit of science and of theology, religion, psychology and all the rest which do not always demand substantiation through experimentation
uwot
Posts: 6093
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:21 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by uwot »

Science is a very difficult thing to define. Few people would argue whether things like physics, chemistry and biology are science, but the fun begins when you start to discuss things like economics, sociology or intelligent design. Even sticking to physics, most people's template for good science, the picture is a lot more blurred than some people, particularly some physicists, are either aware, or will care to admit. Two of the biggest names in recent physics illustrate the point. Stephen Hawking has said that philosophy is dead, at least with respect to physics. The problem, he thinks, is that philosophers haven't kept abreast of the latest developments in physics; therefore, anything they have to say about how the world works is based on dated data that no longer represents contemporary knowledge. What he fails to acknowledge is that, if anything, physics is becoming more philosophical. The point is made by Steve Weinberg in a piece he wrote called Against Philosophy. In it he tells us that the only service that philosophers can provide physicists, is telling them how useless other philosophers are. Even so, he concedes that physicists do have a working philosophy, for most, this is a "rough and ready realism". Basically, this means that most physicists believe that the things they talk about are real. So for instance, some physicists believe that four dimensional spacetime is real, some believe in superstrings, some in branes, some in quantum loops and others in any of the other contenders for a Grand Unified Theory. (Against Philosophy is a chapter in his book Dreams of a Final Theory.) The thing is, they can't all be right, and since the evidence is the same for every theory, the choice of which to study is based on philosophical, rather than scientific grounds.
Even when the evidence supports an hypothesis, physicists can't yet eliminate philosophy. The Higgs boson is taken as confirmation that there is a 'field' that permeates all of space that adds 'weight' to certain particles. It works a bit like water. If you run into the sea, as you get deeper, you slow down, the drag makes movement more difficult; in effect, you become heavier. The problem physicists have is that they cannot detect the field directly, we can only detect it by hitting it incredibly hard, so that we make waves or splashes in it. We have absolutely no clue about what it is 'made of'. That's where philosophy comes back in. You pays yer money and takes yer choice. As to whether this, or any other quantum field, is made by god, or even is god, we simply do not have the technology to help us decide. Until we do, 'What is the universe made of?' will remain a philosophical question.
haribol acharya
Posts: 26
Joined: Sun Jan 01, 2017 11:35 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by haribol acharya »

Arguments for and against God (s) is going on. God is something which cannot be defined by a materialistic portrayal. They say you need to meditate, pray, sublimate your mind and behavior. The existence of God cannot be realized through empirical methods or sensory perceptions. It is not a thing to understand through rational science. All our endeavors to contain God in words, in metaphors do not work. Then how can we know God. I do not know, maybe I have to find out for myself
surreptitious57
Posts: 4257
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:09 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by surreptitious57 »

Science is the study of observable phenomena but that is not everything scientists do for sometimes they consider hypotheses which
cannot be tested but could still be true. As they have to use existing knowledge to make logical assumptions about what is unknown
This was the reasoning behind Einsteins statement that imagination is more important than knowledge and it explains how he came
to develop the Theory Of Special Relativity. Through use of gedanken or thought experiments rather than actual experiments per se
uwot
Posts: 6093
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:21 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by uwot »

surreptitious57 wrote:Science is the study of observable phenomena but that is not everything scientists do for sometimes they consider hypotheses which
cannot be tested but could still be true. As they have to use existing knowledge to make logical assumptions about what is unknown
This was the reasoning behind Einsteins statement that imagination is more important than knowledge and it explains how he came
to develop the Theory Of Special Relativity. Through use of gedanken or thought experiments rather than actual experiments per se
Well, if considering hypotheses which cannot be tested is science, when it is done by scientists, what is it that makes them scientists in the first place? If non-scientists are party to the same knowledge, are their hypotheses any the less scientific?
surreptitious57
Posts: 4257
Joined: Fri Oct 25, 2013 6:09 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by surreptitious57 »

uwot wrote:
surreptitious57 wrote:
Science is the study of observable phenomena but that is not everything scientists do for sometimes they consider hypotheses which
cannot be tested but could still be true. As they have to use existing knowledge to make logical assumptions about what is unknown
This was the reasoning behind Einsteins statement that imagination is more important than knowledge and it explains how he came
to develop the Theory Of Special Relativity. Through use of gedanken or thought experiments rather than actual experiments per se
Well if considering hypotheses which cannot be tested is science when it is done by scientists what is it that makes them
scientists in the first place? If non scientists are party to the same knowledge are their hypotheses any the less scientific?
Science is essentially a hypothesis generating discipline as that is the basis upon which it functions. One cannot determine truth about observable phenomena by reason alone. So while some hypotheses might be untestable not all will. And also not all untestable ones will always be untestable
uwot
Posts: 6093
Joined: Mon Jul 23, 2012 7:21 am

Re: is philosophy a science

Post by uwot »

surreptitious57 wrote:Science is essentially a hypothesis generating discipline as that is the basis upon which it functions. One cannot determine truth about observable phenomena by reason alone. So while some hypotheses might be untestable not all will. And also not all untestable ones will always be untestable
Depends what you mean by functions, and, again, science. It is demonstrably the case that vast majority of people employed as 'scientists' spend most of their career working with models that are known to work. So, for instance, rocket scientists will use Newton's equations to send people to the Moon, or Einstein's to place a GPS satellite in orbit. There is a very strong instrumentalist ethos, which is the backbone of everyday, making things work, science. Of course, there are others who take it upon themselves to devise more accurate, or simpler models, so that science is more effective or efficient. In practise, this means mathematical models, and whether they bear any relationship to reality is irrelevant to their function. Then there is the tiny percentage of people who try to understand the cause of observable phenomena. Some will join research teams working on a particular hypothesis, and the really smart, or persuasive ones will develop research teams that work on their personal ideas. Some are driven by curiosity, some by faith in their own intuitions, some by dreams of glory or riches and some for reasons known only to themselves; scientists are only human, after all. All of which comes under the umbrella of science, but these days, an hypothesis will only be accepted as 'fact' by the general scientific community if it produces results.
Post Reply