Define science and philosophy. Distinguish between them. How are they related. How philosophy enriches science? Are they complementary to each other? How science develops new philosophy?
In my opinion, philosophies always underlie scientific research.
You have research philosophies having as leading principle that we will never be able to completerly comprehend physical reality, which tends to discourage all deep research, generally leading to endless arguments with people with other philosophies.
Other philosophies lean towards the idea that all that could be understood already has, leading to the belief that what we do not understand at this point, we will never be able to understand more deeply, which also discourages any further research, and also leads to endless arguments with people with other philosophies.
Finally, you have philosophies leaning towards the idea that it may be possible to some day understand everthing, which is conducive to indulging in further deeper research instead of endlessly arguing with people having other philosophies.
Dear Jayanta,
It is strange to see such question about philosophy from a scientist with a Ph.D. degree.
J> Does scientific research start with a philosophy and end in/with a philosophy?
Yes, that is correct. Any experiment uses some “a priori” knowledge and some point of view actual before the experiment.
An experiment can confirm or contradict “a priori” knowledge. In case of contradiction, “a priori point of view” becomes falsified by a given experiment and cannot be used in science any further.
In case of confirmation, a researcher should explain step-by-step way of experimentation and way of confirmation. That is necessary because a researcher can use a wrong interpretation of a correct experimental. As a result, his point of view becomes wrong.
J> Define science and philosophy.
The easiest definition is this. Philosophy is a set of categories and a given way of usage of those categories in the human mind. Science gives physical support for those categories.
Everything in the human mind exists in the form of categories. Categories have attributes. Any operation on given categories means operations on attributes of those categories. That is pure philosophy.
However, the human mind makes the same operations on any category without any problem. That ability led to the invention of a scientific method that separates categories coming from the physical world and the other mind.
Therefore, science needs physical experiments to confirm every category it uses. Otherwise, science becomes pointless speculations.
J> How science develops new philosophy?
As soon as science comes to a new category that was not ever used before that category becomes part of philosophy and organizes a way of thoughts.
For example, a category of Evolution (with all its attributes) was unknowns before publication of Charles Darwin’s famous work. After that, philosophy of the human kind possessed all attributes of that category and humankind becomes able to use that category inside the mind.
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