Luca,

I'm not saying emotions have no causal import on behavior; there are no black and white statements concerning the role of emotions in human thought and behavior, obviously, because of so many variables and contingent influences, and because we don't have the tools to measure these kinds of things with any scientific accuracy, and because humans are not static entities but dynamically interact with and react to stimuli in such unpredictable ways.

What I am saying is that scientific method has purposefully developed over thousands of years an approach that tries to discover, test, and explain the observable or "knowable" world, by agreeing among its practitioners on sharing and replicating scientific findings among interested individuals/institutions.  This peer review process is absolutely essential to scientific methodology because it implies that testing of theories across a base of "objective" examiners, who accept the agreement to apply their insight, intelligence, and understanding without prejudice and subjectivity. 

This agreement works pretty well in suppressing wildly inappropriate responses, attacks, subjective ramblings, incoherency, etc.,--all of which are commonly considered as being part of "emotional" responses, responses not associated with pure science in this respect.

Now, if you look at Plutchik's "Wheel of Emotions", he lists 32 -- i.e, 8 basic emotions, with their correlates. Of these, I think it's safe to say that at least nine can be considered intrinsic to the process of discovery (purely scientific, or otherwise): anticipation, interest, optimism, boredom, pensiveness, surprise, distraction, disapproval, and awe. Therefore, in this sense, emotions (as cited above) are inseparable from "being in the world".  This answers Umesh's question nicely, just as it is: we cannot suppress anticipation, interest, optimism, boredom, pensiveness, surprise, distraction, disapproval, and awe, nor can we imagine anyone trying to do so; such a concept is certainly not part of science in any aspect.

I think that in certain situations a scientist must set aside his/her emotions in order to conduct science in an objective manner. As scientists we base our findings on facts, not feelings.

All you have to do is watch Richard Dawkins or Neil deGrasse Tyson, for example, in panel discussions, lectures, and debates, to realize very quickly that there is no emotion lost among the very best scientific minds. Einstein used to meet regularly with a group that included philosophers, writers, artists, musicians, historians, psychologists, and others, all humanists. In my experience, the most devoted thinkers regarding the human condition, that I have met, have been people in the natural sciences, especially biology. David Attenborough's documentaries on the natural world bring out emotion in  viewers in the most important manner, by connecting them through scientific enquiry with the world; that is, he reveals the wonder of the world, as does Tyson, through scientific observation. Nothing more powerful than the truth, and that is what science works hard to ascertain.  

What kills or suppresses honest emotional understanding and response is dogmatism, the opposite to science. I think it is self evident that a free thinker is, by definition, more open, in many ways, to the world, and that includes the emotional one. Enquiry should normally move toward sympathy, as understanding of the world can lead to a greater understanding of one's self in relation to it. That supposedly would lead, then, to a greater understanding of others.

It is also important to factor in the fact that emotions are part of the ancient brain that Carl Sagan has talked at length about, and that one's control over emotions is not very well understood. But scientific enquiry, per se, is "control-free" in terms of persuading emotional responses to phenomena; one would have to look at the environment in which scientific enquiry and specific scientists grow up and operate in, in order to understand how they approach and react to their work.

The main thing to consider is that there is no simple set of discernable relationships between mental operations and emotional responses in a single individual, let alone across a discipline.

 Dear Stephen,

you said that dogmatism is the opposite to science. For that every scientist should develop an epistemological self-knowledge. I think that science has become in our time a myth, because it is considered the place of certainty, exactly as theology has been the place of certainty in Middle Ages. The myth of science was born with the Renaissance, when the verbal Aristotelian knowledge is gradually replaced by a logical-mathematical knowledge suitable to formalise the events of nature and, subsequently, the experimental facts, according to the criterion of the arch of knowledge (facts, events, generalization, new facts, events, and so forth up to develop a theory). Science, thanks to Newton and Bacon, becomes more and more the place of certainty, replacing the now decadent medieval theology. In our time, the ancient schools of thought which did opposed in the philosophical agorà, idealism/realism (Plato and Aristotle) and scepticism (Gorgia and Protagora) are also found respectively in the phenomenological current and in that of analytical philosophy. It is thanks to the latter that science has developed in the sense of "scientific myth": the predominance of technology and of models. The phenomenology instead has assumed the task of investigating the meaning. Emotions have to do with love for nature. Manipulation of nature can become something that deters from the truth. The most of science of normal paradigm, as did state Husserl, in Die Krisis der europaischen Wissenschaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie, hides the reality behind a net of algorithms, In such a way that scientists end up confusing reality with the method. In this point I see the risk to wither the heart.

Try this way :

'Rational' and 'emotionl' are not conflicting notions. Adding another dimension to 'rationa'l will result in 'emotional' (one additional degree of freedom). So emotions/creativeness make science advance and vice-versa

Daniele,

I'm afraid you are conflating and confusing different modes of thought. Theology is not investigative, in fact it is violently opposed to critical dialogue concerning its dogma (which, by the way, is the only way dogma exists). Scientific method, on the other hand, is essentially common sense observation of the way things work.  Chimpanzees figuring out how to retrieve termites from deep in the nest by using sticks or grass "tools" are basically applying scientific principles of observation coupled with trial and error, then building up a catalogue of tried and "true" methods/results that tell them something about how the world works.  To say that that approach is "myth", as you do, is seriously off the mark and unrelated.

Myth,  whether considered as a traditional story, especially one concerning the early history of a people or explaining some natural or social phenomenon, and typically involving supernatural beings or events, or as a widely held but false belief or idea, has no relationship whatsoever with scientific enquiry.  Myth is a solidified story about a lost past event, or false event.  Science is an ongoing, ever changing enquiry that questions itself relentlessly, discarding unworkable theories. It is transparent and always open to question and the inclusion of new ideas.  Myth is closed, unprovable, and often discarded in the face of a withering scientific enquiry. For example, Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod to prevent church-bell ringers from being electrocuted.  He was opposed by the religious leaders, who firmly believed lightning was sent by God to punish those who were struck by it. Well, who won out in the end, myth or science? The difference between the two is pretty clear.

If an individual believes that science is infallible, then that person doesn't understand scientific method, which relies on fallibility.  Perhaps what you mean is that there are people who believe, without understanding, that "science", in a rather meaningless general sense, provides answers to everything.  But that has nothing to do with science, itself, but some people's need to believe with certainty in something that "promises" to explain the largely incomprehensible world they live in, as religion purports to do; that's why science has been called a religion by some misguided writers.

I'm also afraid that when you say "Emotions have to do with love for nature", you have entered a wildly broad and unwieldy realm. The number of people in society that are highly emotional but have no concern for nature must be staggering, especially if one considers people as nature. But what does science's "manipulation" of nature mean, anyway? That's another statement that explains nothing. Is manipulating genes in a way that cures a debilitating disease something that "deters from the truth", as you say? Or cross-breeding sheep to get a healthier strain? You rule out pharmacology, gene expression, animal husbandry, etc., etc., almost ad infinitum.

Last, philosophy attempts to explain phenomena related to the human condition, to "study the fundamental nature of knowledge, reality, and existence, especially when considered as an academic discipline," to "strive for systematic expertise at working out how one may best find individual and collective fulfilment." This is not what science is about, nor has it ever wanted or pretended to be. Just like the chimp, scientists are looking for how things work, what constitutes the natural world. If the chimp stopped to contemplate if it were morally correct to eat a termite it would starve to death. Not that scientists are immoral, but that morality is not the purpose of scientific enquiry  (There are a number of safeguards and controlling ethical procedures that govern scientific enquiry, particularly regarding living subjects).  Philosophical enquiry is a way of trying to put a framework around the human condition.  Both disciplines are part of the incredibly sophisticated workings of the brain, but they are not opposed, nor are they supposed to supplant one another, they simply co-exist.  The great difference is that philosophy intends to create a way to live one's life, while science never takes that stance. That's why religion has such a difficult time with science's neutrality, or non-positioning, especially in relation to "belief systems", which suspend rationality completely.

So, if you are concerned with people confusing reality with method, I would suggest you consider religious "believers" who blow up priceless historical artifacts in the name of their god (the underpinning of their "philosophy"), blow up defenseless, innocent women and children, force their religion on others, especially through theocracies, ignore human rights, especially those of women, etc.  Talk about philosophies that "wither the heart"!

Where do you see any scientists doing these things, and as part of their confusion about reality and "method"?

Dear Stephen, I think you didn't absolutly understand what I did mean with my words. I don't compare theology and science. Common sense in Eurepean tradition, better in continental tradition means ingenuous objectivism or ingenuous realism. It is impossible to talk about this argument if you have not read Die Krisis. Phenomenology is a scientific method of knowledge as analytical philosophy. Husserl always starts from "immer wieder" that means "starting every time from the beginning" I don't want, is not my spirit to talk for being right. Or we try to get on the same wavelenght, quietly as old friends, otherwise it is only a try to be right. And this latter has noting to do with the research of the truth. Your answer shows your emotions more than your thought.

Daniele,

I'm afraid we're on completely different wavelengths. I must also say that I am not interested in having a dialogue that hinges on having read one book--that is no different than having a conversation with a Christian, who insists that a dialogue about science cannot take place without understanding the Bible. The foundational question was about the possible effect of science on emotion, which has nothing at all to do with phenomenology, but with a particular methodology used to directly interface with the observable world and the real, not philosophical, cause and effect on a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one's circumstances, mood, or relationships with others, an instinctive or intuitive feeling as distinguished from reasoning or knowledge. By definition we are not engaging in a philosophical system of constructs here. C'est tout. You've pushed this into the philosophical realm where it absolutely doesn't belong.  Philosophy, for all intents and purposes, simply doesn't operate in the laboratory. Researchers at CERN are not sitting around talking about Husserl, but are heavily engaged in making outrageously sophisticated computational analyses "work" in real terms. There is nothing remotely ingenuous about it.

If you sincerely want to discuss science and emotion from an observable, analytical, biological, chemical, experiential, real point of view, without bringing philosophy into it, then I am very happy to continue. Otherwise, it is really fruitless, because philosophy has nothing to do with any link between scientific methodology and genetically engineered instincts. One simply can't talk about scientific methodology through the glasses of an incongruent paradigm.  

Philosophy appears to be your area of focus. Of course, I respect that. However, I have to emphasize that it has no place in this particular subject; it is outside the parameters. It is like looking at a beautiful sunset and suddenly talking about chocolate.

Also, you haven't addressed any of the points I made, especially concerning the gross misuse of the notion of "myth", which patently doesn't apply to the position of science in society.  

I am willing to concede, the most friendly way, that we are working from vastly different platforms, which are incommensurable.

Dear Stephen,

do you know that there is a "thing" called philosopy of science? It is impossible to discuss on a scientific topic without an epistemological point of view, better without an epistemological self-awareness. The question Do the rational thoughts of sciences are trying to suppress natural human emotions? Is a typical topic that involves both cognitive neuroscience and phenomenology. You cannot compare Die Krisis with the Bible or Talmud. This kind of problems as the relationship between emotions and rational thoughs, on the biological plane, involves the relationship between neocortex and the deeper structures as limbic system. That has to do with the objective plane of neuroscience that indagates the brain and the subjective one of self-consciousness. In our time problems as the relationship between emotions and thought have created a new discipline called neurophenomenology. I did try to see the question from this point of view. I am sorry for the misunderstanding.

regards

Daniele

p.s. I would like to know what do other followers think about our discussion.

If science enforces reduction and forcefully pushes people to believe in its narrow-mindedness, then it will affect human emotions because of its one sided approach. Emotions are a mixture of objective and subjective experiences where one cannot survive with the other.

art and science in a surprising beauty. 3 D street art. The work completely 2 D appears 3 D through the hyperbolic perspective of Wenner, a scientific invention that causes strong emotions in the observers. Anyway I totally agree with Contzen

Dear Umesh, most people actually do not see a Great Divide between rationality and emotion. My scientist friends are quite passionate about what they do in their labs. My guess if that this division between the brain and the heart is a caricature we owe to the XVIIIth century. Voltaire's Pangloss could be one of those funny and stupid "rationalists" we like to laugh about. 

None of the four "humors" in ancient and Medieval science isolates "rationality", as seen from Aristotle through the Islamic scientists of the 12-13th centuries like Maimonides and Avicenna, or Spaniard Huarte de San Juan in his Examen de Ingenios (1575), or Robert Burton in his famed Anatomy of Melancholy (1621), not even Isaac Newton, who was a famed astrologist himself, and quite passionate. The 18th century was quite a passionate century, as they studied the passions of the soul and their effect on the human body, as witnessed in many articles of Diderot and D'Alembert's L'Encyclopédie. The Romantics in the 19th century delved seriously into passion and its effects, a century which culminated in Freud's publication of his still well-considered The Interpretation of Dreams (1899), and his book on the joke (1905). Late modernity has embraced further exploration of what is now called "affect". I really do not see any serious historical moment defending rationality over passions and affects, at least in Western culture.

Best regards, Lilliana

One can be passionate and emotional about one's science without injecting emotions into one's research. They are two different things.

Dear James, rationality is, in itself, one of the passions. I have a passion for order, for example. Of course we inject that into all we do if we want it to come out right. Rationality is actually embracing method and order, following a rule (as philosopher Saul Kripke and Wittgenstein propose), etc. We learn to be rational when we learn specific ways to do things.

In fact, there is no creativity if we abide by strict method and order. After we invent, we try to develop that invention into an orderly way of repeating it, as in the experimental method. We are taught to abide by method. We find it so hard precisely because it is, literally, a "tight spot".

Best regards, Lilliana

Dear Liliana,

Maimonides was jewish (משה בן מימוּן ) " Rabbī Mōsheh ben Maymōn".  Reading the most of the answers, I don't find an answer that really reply in a suitable way to the question Do the rational thoughts of sciences are trying to suppress natural human emotions? Ego, Ego, Ego... Maybe because I am a 65 years old Medical Doctor I read the answers paying attention to the psycological appearance of writers. For me it is very important the wie not only the was. I have been involved in an useless discussion with a follower. Now I am tired.

Nazi scientists used morphine to make their horrible experiments to produce some kind of knowledge.. Human soul cannot make someone (also an animal) suffering without feel pain. In my life I did meet sadistic researchers. The true science has to do above all with ethics, with respect for nature. "Verum and bonum convertuntur cum ente" was the fundamental category of Thomas of Aquin. 

There is nothing as absolutely rational or absolutely emotional, they are mostly complementary to each other. Science encourages reasoning but judgement does not always depend on reasoning alone it is contingent also on added value of human emotions. There are checks and balances. Too much leaning on any one will reduce the significance of human thoughts and actions.

Dear Umesh et al,

What Gopa and everyone else has said is true in respect to their points of view, but these replies are tangential, I'm afraid, to Umesh's original question.

Not all thinking is rational, at least as we would define rational. Rational thinking is the ability to consider the relevant variables of a situation and to access, organize, and analyze relevant information (e.g., facts, opinions, judgments, and data) to arrive at a sound conclusion. Defining intelligence, Sternberg writes: "Successful intelligence as I view it involves analytical, creative, and practical aspects. The analytic aspect is used to solve problems, the creative aspect to decide what problems to solve, and the practical aspect to make solutions effective." And though the study of thought and thinking as an end in itself is a worthwhile pursuit, the scientist's focus is on the need to use thought as a precursor to and part of action, and rational thinking helps them arrive at a conclusion. 

However, as I've tried to repeatedly stress, thinking about science and doing science are two different things and can't be conflated.  The absolute foundation for science, as a discipline, is scientific method. I will offer Humberto Maturana's definition, for the sake of clarity:

"1. Observation. In order to count as “scientific,” an observation must be carried

out under certain constraints, and the constraints must be made explicit (so

that the observation can be repeated).

2. By relating the observations, a model is inductively derived—usually a model

that involves causal connections. (Often an idea of the model precedes the

observations of step (1) and to some extent determines their constraints.)

3. By deduction, a prediction is derived from the model, a prediction that

concerns an event that has not yet been observed.

4. The scientist then sets out to observe the predicted event, and this

observation must again comply with the constraints that governed

observation in (1)." 

This methodology has been erected over thousands of years of trial and error within the observer’s experiential interface, and has the aim of trying to distinguish between what might be cautiously called "justified belief", and opinion. It is not observer-independent but rather a kind of consensus among scientific observers who are able to replicate the findings. But science is generally not concerned with discovering some absolute truth, but in solving a specific goal; a theory is either a viable solution to a problem or not. A scientific model is more or less a crystallization of very specific regularities.

To close I would like to quote from a paper by Ernst von Glasersfeld:

"In order to observe anything, in order to 'collect data,' one must have some

notion—no matter how primitive and preliminary—of the particular experiences one

intends to relate to one another. It is, obviously, these experiences that one will be

looking for. In order to find them, one necessarily assimilates and disregards all sorts

of differences in individual observations. The longer this goes on successfully and the

more often the model one has constructed proves useful, the stronger becomes the

belief that one has discovered a real connection, if not a Law of Nature. And once that belief has been established, there is a powerful resistance against any suggestion of change and—as Thomas Kuhn has so nicely shown with examples from the history of science—there will be powerful efforts to sweep any observed irregularity under the rug. . .

Science proceeds by modeling limited experiential situations—by focusing on a

few variables, and deliberately disregarding many. It cannot do otherwise, and it

should not do otherwise. But scientists must never drift into the misplaced religious

belief that they are discovering what the world is really like. They should always

remain aware of the fact that what they are dealing with is not the real world but an

observer’s experience—and it is not even all an observer could experience, but

deliberately constrained experiences or experiments that happen to fit the scientific

model the observer is working with. . ."

Implicit and explicit in the above is the realization that the observer's experiences enter into scientific method and that human emotion is not some extraneous element, but that it is relatively constrained through the application of scientific rules of procedure. However, emotion is not targeted in any way as something nefarious in the role of being a scientist.

I do hope this brings some clarity to Umesh's original question

Rationality (intellectuality) exists as a separate system, yet integrated, with the systems of emotions.  One strong thought cuts through any feeling of emotion.  Our hair, extensions of our thoughts, and nails, extensions of our feelings, tell us that. Both are subject to growth and change over time.

Dear Umesh:

Emotions are the software of the body, if you read evolutionary psychology and the theories of emotional economy from Dan Arielly, you will find the answer. Emotions go first, rationality is a paradigm

to: Marquez-Godoy

Emotions don't "go first". Biological pressures and metabolism drive certains actions regardless of emotional interface.  People in the Ituri forest discovering how to work together to drive prey into nets that they have made (not dependent on emotion) is an example of solving a basic problem concerning the necessity to eat. The pressure to eat is not emotionally based but solution based on cause and effect observation through experience. Even sociopaths, unable to feel emotion, can function in a problem-solving fashion. Emotional mechanisms can stimulate and even override thought processes, especially in fight-or-flight situations, etc., but even a bower bird building an elaborate nest has to choose which twigs to pick and which to reject, and how to put them all together to make a satisfactory bower that is structurally adequate as well as satisfying to some inner aesthetic of what makes an attractive bower. It would be incorrect to say that emotions in the bird are driving agency; and it is the same kind of agency which drives humans to inhabit caves and then, later, to construct the first "primitive" shelters. So, then, pleasure is an emotional state, but it comes "after" cognition or agency, not before. That is, if a chimp repeatedly sticks a straw into a termite nest but doesn't catch any termites, it will have an emotional response, but only after "realizing" that cognition-linked agency hasn't worked; emotion hasn't driven the cognition-agency-cognition link in this case.

The link between cognition and emotion is not perfectly understood, of course, and it is obvious that the cognition-emotion feedback, or circularity, is extremely complex, and that we don't have  precise enough words to describe emotions: happiness, for example, can describe a response that has wildly opposite triggers: Hitler being happy that the Jews have been driven out of Germany; or a person being happy to see a friend after a long period of being separated. What does happy mean in such disparate cases? The point is, that definitions can evade scientifically-precise usefulness, leaving us to wonder how "emotion" is to be translated in any given circumstance.  At least at the moment it doesn't seem that the concept of emotion allows for a common understanding across the board of human experience and cognition.  Lazarus, for example, states that even though emotions and cognitions both have survival value, cognition (including unconscious processing) is a necessary condition for emotion. And Plutchik has said in this regard: “The appropriateness of an emotional response can determine whether the individual lives or dies. The whole cognitive process evolved over millions of years in order to make the evaluation of stimulus events more correct and the predictions more precise so that the motional behavior that finally resulted would be adaptively related to the stimulus events. Emotional behavior, therefore, is the proximate basis for the ultimate outcome of increased inclusive fitness.”

As far as rationality being a "paradigm", I don't know what you mean. Two definitions of paradigm that I have found useful are Ritzer's, "A paradigm is a fundamental image of the subject mater within a science. It serves to define what should be studied, what questions should be asked, and what rules should be followed in interpreting the answers obtained. The paradigm is the broadest unit of consensus within a science and serves to differentiate one scientific community (or sub-community.  A paradigm is the specific collection of questions, viewpoints and models that define how the authors, publishers, and theorists, who subscribe to that paradigm, view and approach the science. ) from another. It subsumes, defines and interrelates the exemplars, theories, and methods and tools that exist within it; and Salter's "A paradigm is the specific collection of questions, viewpoints and models that define how the authors, publishers, and theorists, who subscribe to that paradigm, view and approach the science.

I also agree with Göktürk that we are using the word paradigm without being aware of what we mean.  Anyway, I don't see the word "rationality" having so much to do with the question of emotion and cognition and their relationship. As well, the leaps of creative thought that elucidate new ideas in science cannot be labeled in any strict or confining sense with the word "rationality".

Stephen Childress:

I can't follow your reasoning. Are you arguing that emotions have no causal import on our behavior?

Luca,

I'm not saying emotions have no causal import on behavior; there are no black and white statements concerning the role of emotions in human thought and behavior, obviously, because of so many variables and contingent influences, and because we don't have the tools to measure these kinds of things with any scientific accuracy, and because humans are not static entities but dynamically interact with and react to stimuli in such unpredictable ways.

What I am saying is that scientific method has purposefully developed over thousands of years an approach that tries to discover, test, and explain the observable or "knowable" world, by agreeing among its practitioners on sharing and replicating scientific findings among interested individuals/institutions.  This peer review process is absolutely essential to scientific methodology because it implies that testing of theories across a base of "objective" examiners, who accept the agreement to apply their insight, intelligence, and understanding without prejudice and subjectivity. 

This agreement works pretty well in suppressing wildly inappropriate responses, attacks, subjective ramblings, incoherency, etc.,--all of which are commonly considered as being part of "emotional" responses, responses not associated with pure science in this respect.

Now, if you look at Plutchik's "Wheel of Emotions", he lists 32 -- i.e, 8 basic emotions, with their correlates. Of these, I think it's safe to say that at least nine can be considered intrinsic to the process of discovery (purely scientific, or otherwise): anticipation, interest, optimism, boredom, pensiveness, surprise, distraction, disapproval, and awe. Therefore, in this sense, emotions (as cited above) are inseparable from "being in the world".  This answers Umesh's question nicely, just as it is: we cannot suppress anticipation, interest, optimism, boredom, pensiveness, surprise, distraction, disapproval, and awe, nor can we imagine anyone trying to do so; such a concept is certainly not part of science in any aspect.

Dear all,

thank you for your all important opinions and thoughts for the sited question, I have really enriched my own thoughts and perception by reading wonderful arguments on the above contradictory concepts/ideas of emotions and science. I am also trying to write a paper on the asked questions and I would be really glad if any one would like to join me.

Thank You

Umesh 

Hi Mr. Khute,

Thinking in this regard the natural sciences with the rational, each of which has a base that justice his statement. sometimes we can imagine that this is happening, especially when we do research. But other sciences such as philosophy, for example, shows that the abstract is part of all our lives.

 Daniel,

I believe you have to be very careful when attempting to call philosophy a science, which it is not. See Julian Friedland's argument at:               http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/philosophy-is-not-a-science/

Hi Mr. Stephen, your opinion is very important. Thank's for "blog opinionator"., but i liked this message:

"Philosophy is the queen of the sciences. The substantiation of the validity of measurements, the role of definitions, the hierarchy of knowledge and many other fundamental questions are under the purview of philosophy. Those who ignore Ayn Rand always come up with theories to discredit philosophy" - Tuner38

One day I listened others questions about the "equilibrium between science and religion, or science and philosophy", necessary today, not to fall into a pure materialism.

Regards,

Daniel Magrini.

Daniel,

You haven't addressed any of the incisive, and I think determining, points that Friedland made.  If you can show that they are not applicable then a real dialogue can ensue.

It stands obvious that philosophy and science can't be conflated.  As Friedland, and others, point out, there are some shared aspects between philosophical enquiry and science, but the two disciplines largely stand apart. One can sit at home in an armchair and contemplate the universe, but it is completely another thing to build instruments for looking at the various elements of the universe, as did Galileo, Kepler, Brahe, Herschel, Hubble, and others, who methodically, day after day, for years kept meticulous records of their sightings and built a corpus of data about observable phenomena.

One can't say that there is no significant difference between those men's work and the wholly mentally situated act of constructing  abstract notions of relationships that cannot be proven, which is  what philosophy is.  The validity of measurements is indisputably not born out  by philosophy, but by practical trial and error over thousands of years, resulting in agreed upon units--agreed upon because they are necessary for the standardized procedures, like building bridges and cathedrals, or to enable pharmacological trustworthiness in the dispensing of drugs, etc., etc.  Measurement of your arm length to make sure your new shirt will fit has nothing to do with philosophy.  Definitions, as well, are, again, endemic to the nature of having to work with others, of being a social animal and needing to communicate. The definition of fire as energy took a very long time to come about, but only after equipment  capable of measuring energy was developed, and only after microscopes and other paraphernalia made it possible to concretely determine the nature of certain phenomena.  It is simply impossible to sit or walk around and contemplate the meaning of life and thereby discover molecular bonding.

If you take the position that philosophy is behind all human fundamental questioning then you make the term so vast that it explains everything and therefore explains nothing.

Neither I, nor Friedland, nor others are discrediting philosophy, but simply see the important differences between philosophy and science (as well as some of the crossovers).  Also, it is not materialism that drives scientific enquiry but curiosity and wonder. To want to know what a star is, is not simultaneously the need to put stars into a philosophical relationship with the whole known world. That contemplation may or may not come later to an astronomer, but, say, measuring the redshift in the light of distant stars and discovering that stars are moving away, and at measurable velocities, is absolutely not a philosophically-driven enquiry. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. 

There are and have been throughout history countless philosophies describing "the nature of the world", and religions have succeeded very well in cornering the market on this question: that they have done so IN OPPOSITION TO SCIENTIFIC ENQUIRY should, as only one example, force you to acknowledge a fundamental difference between philosophy and science.  Not materialism, but material objects, such as fossils, tell us simple truths that all the purely mental exercises, by themselves, or under the sway of unscientific methodology, can never even begin to understand.

Phrases like "Philosophy is the queen of the sciences", are terribly misleading as well as uncomfortably self-righteous.  If we accept a rather simply working definition of science as a "knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through the scientific method and concerned with the physical world and its phenomena", then there is no "queen", there is no "purview".  There is, rather, a complex matrix involving biology, chemistry, mathematics, physics and other "sciences". The word science comes from the Latin "scientia," meaning knowledge, and has come to mean, over the centuries, knowledge obtained through observation of the material, or physical, world.  There is a world of difference between Plato and the cave and colliding atoms at CERN, between performing female genital mutilation and developing tampax. If these don't describe the difference between philosophy and science then I needn't possibly say more.

"Natural human emotions" are evolutionary proclivities that is the subject matter of science. There is no question that natural human emotions and science go hand-in-hand.

As a scientist with 20 years of professional experience, I can say that science does not suppress the activity "natural human emotions", but makes them brighter and more expressive. Although, I agree, these emotions are manifested not everywhere and not as in an artist or in an actor in the theater. If a scientist is developing a harmonious personality, all departments of his brain had developed too, including emotiogenic areas of the brain. Typically, these scientists are fond of music, write poems and draw pictures. But if a scientist feels severe stress, it emotiogenic brain areasmay be damaged. And then such a person is deprived of "natural human emotion" or such emotions become perverted. But this misfortune happens because of stress and can happen to a person of any profession.Let's do science correctly and we have also bright emotions!

Read Antonio Damassio on emotions and rationality he is a neurologist and in my view provides a good account of the links between rationality and emotion 

Rational scientific thinking can actually help humans to understand their naturally occurring emotions.  For instance, by understanding the evolutionary history of brain development we can better understand why we "automatically" respond to certain situations with disgust, fear, aversion, etc.  Once we can understand the rational source of our emotions (existing for purposes of social cohesion and survival) we can actually use this information to develop higher levels of self-compassion and empathy with others.  If you are more interested in this topic I suggest looking at Tara Brach who has given multiple talks on this topic.