Throughout history, philosophy and sciences have maintained varying relationships, making the rapprochement between the two disciplines more complex than the above answers have suggested.  Among the pre-Socratics cognition was conceived as truth, the unveiling of being.  Plato spoke of philo-sophía, love of knowledge, understood as the science of the dialectic as a way to cognition. Aristotle clearly distinguished metaphysics and physics in treatises devoted to each.  Metaphysics he understood as the cognition of being; physica as the study of nature, a particularity of being,  The Middle Ages privileged theology as the 'regina scientiarum,' the queen of the sciences, and referred metaphysics to God, the Being of beings.  Medieval theologians Christianized or Judaized Aristotle.  The Renaissance (esp. Descartes) combatted the Aristotelian compartmentalization of knowledge and sought a "mathesis universalis," a universal cognition subordinated to mathematical reason.  The rise of experimental science with Newton drew philosophy into a subordinate position with respect to physico-mathematical logic.  Kant, postponing consideration of metaphysics, asked how are physico-mathetical apriorities possible. The post-Kantians Hegel, Fichte, Schelling with their transcendental idealisms revindicated the priority of metaphysics. However, the triumph of laboratory science in the mid-19th. c. discredited metaphysics as unsupported by evidence (positivism).  Marburg Neokantians of the late 19th and early 20th c. built philosophies based on the primacy of physico-mathematical logic, to which ethics and esthetics were subordinated.  Husserl at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century found the evidence of physico-mathematical logic deficient in rigor, breadth, and depth and deemed pure phenomenology (a kind of meta-logic) the pure, rigorous science.  Einstein grounded his theories of relativity on the philosophies of Kant and Mach. In the late 20th. century the increasing specialization of the positive sciences has separated them each year more from philosophies, while philosophy has hastened to embrace contributions from the positive sciences for the rigor of its own doctrines.     

Can philosophy develop by itself, without the support of science? Can science "work" without philosophy? Some people think that the sciences can stand apart from philosophy, that the scientist should actually avoid philosophising, the latter often being understood as groundless and generally vague theorising. If the term philosophy is given such a poor interpretation, then of course anyone would agree with the warning "Physics, beware of metaphysics!" But no such warning applies to philosophy in the higher sense of the term. The specific sciences cannot and should not break their connections with true philosophy.

Science and philosophy have always learned from each other. Philosophy tirelessly draws from scientific discoveries fresh strength, material for broad generalisations, while to the sciences it imparts the world-view and methodological im pulses of its universal principles. Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought. One example is the idea of the atomic structure of things voiced by Democritus. Certain conjectures about natural selection were made in ancient times by the philosopher Lucretius and later by the French thinker Diderot. Hypothetically he anticipated what became a scientific fact two centuries later. We may also recall the Cartesian reflex and the philosopher's proposition on the conservation of motion in the universe.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/spirkin/works/dialectical-materialism/ch01-s04.html

What is the definition of 'what you know'? Are you certain that what you know truly know? If we cannot answer these simple question properly can we use the classification of Russell? 

Science started as a branch of philosophy called natural philosophy, but nowadays philosophy and science are two distinct activities.

Science is the systematic method of acquiring knowledge based on observations and/or experiments. Philosophy answers the questions that cannot be answered by experiments and/or observations.

The Philosophy of Science exists. What about the Science of Science?

Both Mathematics and Philosophy are built on Logic.

Without going through the various viewpoints discussed above, I want to present here what I gathered from the ancient Indian knowledge expressed in Vedanta Darshan (meaning direct perception), commonly known in the West as Vedanta Philosophy. Such knowledge was gathered by the sincerest ancient seekers of truth using a disciplined well-chalked out path of Vedanta and were subsequently verified by others seekers of the truth following the proven path before it was accepted by the followers of Vedanta in next generations.

In a recent article, entitled "By complimenting each other science and spirituality potentiate our mind-body-bioenergetics that we embody" I have presented the material to my RG colleagues in a systematic way. You are most welcome to download the article from my site. 

In response to Bertrand Russell , i should say him : Philosophy is what you know. Science is what you don't know !

Starting from philosophy, we see a phenomenon in modern times, that each scientific field has also a philosophy of ....Thus physics-philosophy of physics, Biology-philosophy of biology, etc. It seems that for philosophy proper, remains only metaphysics.

Another phenomenon is that the corresponding philosophers are well versed in the corresponding fields. 

In this way several scientific fields come very close to corresponding philosophical approach.

in particular for mathematics, philosophy of mathematics deals with rather foundational problems, and the status of non-analytic aspects of mathematics, e.g. "mathematical intuition", "phantasy", perception, cognition, etc. 

The greek Aristotle would find difficulties in answering this question...

Although he is best  renown as a philosopher, from the School of Athens, one should not forget that he was the medical practitioner of King Philip of Capadoccia, who chose him to educate his son Alexander the Great, 

Throughout history, philosophy and sciences have maintained varying relationships, making the rapprochement between the two disciplines more complex than the above answers have suggested.  Among the pre-Socratics cognition was conceived as truth, the unveiling of being.  Plato spoke of philo-sophía, love of knowledge, understood as the science of the dialectic as a way to cognition. Aristotle clearly distinguished metaphysics and physics in treatises devoted to each.  Metaphysics he understood as the cognition of being; physica as the study of nature, a particularity of being,  The Middle Ages privileged theology as the 'regina scientiarum,' the queen of the sciences, and referred metaphysics to God, the Being of beings.  Medieval theologians Christianized or Judaized Aristotle.  The Renaissance (esp. Descartes) combatted the Aristotelian compartmentalization of knowledge and sought a "mathesis universalis," a universal cognition subordinated to mathematical reason.  The rise of experimental science with Newton drew philosophy into a subordinate position with respect to physico-mathematical logic.  Kant, postponing consideration of metaphysics, asked how are physico-mathetical apriorities possible. The post-Kantians Hegel, Fichte, Schelling with their transcendental idealisms revindicated the priority of metaphysics. However, the triumph of laboratory science in the mid-19th. c. discredited metaphysics as unsupported by evidence (positivism).  Marburg Neokantians of the late 19th and early 20th c. built philosophies based on the primacy of physico-mathematical logic, to which ethics and esthetics were subordinated.  Husserl at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century found the evidence of physico-mathematical logic deficient in rigor, breadth, and depth and deemed pure phenomenology (a kind of meta-logic) the pure, rigorous science.  Einstein grounded his theories of relativity on the philosophies of Kant and Mach. In the late 20th. century the increasing specialization of the positive sciences has separated them each year more from philosophies, while philosophy has hastened to embrace contributions from the positive sciences for the rigor of its own doctrines.     

Dear All, Thank you all for very good opinions. As @Abedallah pointed out "Both Mathematics and Philosophy are built on Logic."  But how about the differences between the two? Is not philosophy a game with objectives and no rules. but mathematics  a game with rules and no objectives?

I want to add a relevant unpublished poem of mine (below) to this interesting discussion.

Socrates, the Great Sage

Dr. Tushar K. Ray

This message is about the famous mystic, Socrates:

The sage who used to roam on the streets of Athens

Holding a lamp in his hand

With a pair of piercing eyes

Always fixing on passing faces lifting the lamp high

And nodding his head in denial as he went along!

“What are you looking for, Socrates?” some would ask

And the sage would say “A complete man”!

“I want to find a man in total communion”

“And have you found that to date?”

“Oh not yet, not yet”, said Socrates as he walked along!

And as the legend goes his frantic search ended in vain

Essence of this fable is this:

That the Spirit, like the Sun, is self revealing

And depending on the level of self-realization in a man

The Spirit reveals itself accordingly on the man’s face

Since face is the mirror of a man

That bears the Soul’s accurate reflection

And self-realized souls reflect own spirit in full communion

So, the corporal body is like a thin lamp-cover to them

Such total connectivity pervades within and without us

Built on a feedback support system of our universe

That creates and sustains this vastly intricate network

And almighty Spirit-self is empowering this work

Upon realization of which we become free as the Spirit

And though living in a material body

A man becomes the Self-revealing, all-connected entity

Engaged in a vast field of Quantum creativity

Always aware of his own nature of endless possibility

Where one enjoys the spirit-self in spontaneous fun

Hence, this state is most beloved to entire humanity

And Socrates was looking for such a total man

Who like himself enjoying own-self in spiritual unity!

--------------------------------------------------

December 14, 2004

Dear Tushar Kanti Ray. i would like to thank you for sharing your poem with us. 

Philosophy is the art of asking questions. Science is the tentative to prove theories. If the world depended exclusively one of  these two, we would tend to live either in a dream world  or in a slow pace world. The power of imagination transport us to a future perspective and the power to state provable thesis bring us back to the ground.

Dear Mahmoud, you have provided much food for thought with your statement, "Is not philosophy a game with objectives and no rules. but mathematics  a game with rules and no objectives?" Games are by definition activities with their ends in themselves. Therefore every game has an objective (or end).  Philosophy, as I understand it, is a cognition striving for universal knowledge autonomous with respect to other cognitions. This universal knowledge is cognition directed toward understanding of being. Being lies outside the philosophical effort and exists as its objective.  Surely philosophy has something of a game as Plato recognized in The Laws, Bk. VII. But to call it a game as such is an exaggeration, a metaphor.  Moreover, philosophy certainly does have rules. These rules are what philosophers call its methods.  Méthodos in Greek means a road toward (knowledge). 

As to mathematics, the most advanced forms of this cognitive discipline have no objects in the outside world.  In this respect these forms are indeed games, and mathematicians recognize them as such. However, the lower and simpler mathematics do apply to the outside world.  Therefore they are not games in the strict sense. Moreover, you and I agree that mathematics has rules. These are its axioms, which vary from one form of mathematics to another, just as methods vary from one philosophy to another. 

To conclude: philosophy is like a game, but it has objectives as well as rules (its method).  Mathematics is a game in its higher branches, but not its lower ones, and it too has rules (axioms). 

Dear Nelson. Thank you for your answer. True philosophy is more like the Yellow Brick Road—there's only one correct route, but there are lots of false turns . Once Ambrose Bierce (1842–1915?) said "Philosophy: A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing."  Who have been the models for Bierce's cynicism? If it's mostly just a series of wrong turns, why should we study the history of philosophy?

Dear Maria

" King Philip of Capadoccia," is a mistake! What you wanted to say is 

Philip II, King of Macedonia!

In ancient times, the term philosophy included science as part of the general field of knowledge of natural philosophy. Before the scientific method, science was known as natural philosophy. While philosophy and science are held as separate disciplines, there is an immutable relationship between them and both philosophy and science go well together. Philosophy gives a scientist the ability to think beyond what is observable. Science gives a philosopher the ability to recognize what is real.

In the beginning, Science and philosophy were one thing.  Scientia meant knowledge, and Philosophia was love of wisdom.

In fact, Philosophy is different from science – scientists often focus on that which is successful, that which is pragmatic, what they can use to produce and interpret data, whereas Philosophers have an interest in unanswerable questions.

We do not understand why nature attempt to know thyself.  When we will know that we will know thyself.  This attempt to know thyself is philosophy. 

What is philosophical thinking? Is it OK to regurgitate descriptions of other people's ideas or it would be better to think through them critically and struggle with them. Although the dimension of philosophy and science domains can be taught or acquired to some extend,  one must develop creativity, depth and originality personally by his/her own through thinking beyond what is given or known. .

What is the origin of inspiration/Eureka in philosophical thinking, e.g. recombining existing information or producing new information? Does inspiration/Eureka provoke the same biology-based feelings in science and philosophy?

Dear Marcel,

The recombining of existing information often produces new information, just as the combining of two existing chemical substances often makes a new substance (e.g., combine a sodium ion with a chlorine ion and you get table salt).  The Eureka experience can arise when you discover new relationships between existing data. The ancients compared this experience to the lifting of a veil or to a religious revelation. I have experienced the Aha! sensation when comparing two thinkers whose relationship to one another previously had been unknown. The two thinkers were each philosophers, so I was probably operating in the sphere of philosophy. Later on, I underwent the same sensation when discovering unknown relationships between essayists and psychologists. This must have happened in (social) science.   It is quite another question whether these eureka feelings were based on my biology. To speak of biology is to introduce another variable into the experience of discovery.

Dear Kamal. Thank you expressing your viewpoint on this question. As you said "Philosophy (the soul) and science (the body) of seeking the truth. Both are faces for the same coin"  Indeed, very short but complete way to describe the two. I found another link (see below!) and the way to say it: Science (as Mind) and Philosophy as (Heart). Mind needs proof, explanations that are found outside, whereas Heart is capable of finding its own answers and explanations by doing inner thinking.

https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081008115436AAqmSwp

Roland,

You are opposing what cannot be separated.  A scientist may not need to be philosophically aware if he is just filling small scientific gaps.  For filling big scientific gap, philosophical speculation is required.  Any new areas of sciences begin in philosophical speculations.  The reason is simple, how can you come to precise models/description without groping in the vague for a while?  Experimentation is only possible when the descriptions are precise enough and at this stage of development philosophy is called science.  It is just a question of level of precision.

I had a down-vote in answering this question! If S/he is so polite please give me the reasons for that! I may be better to know my mistakes!!

Dear @Francesca said "Philosphers or spiritual People seek the Truth. But I think both domains (science and philosophy) are seeking the same thing - Truth.Why? only because humans seek the Truth. Remember that,  scientists and philosophers are both human being and not disciplines. In fact, most scientists also practice logic,  reasoning, mathematics, and various forms of hard philosophy just as philosophers  do.

Dear Roland,

All historians most know of the remarkable impact Stephen Jay Gould has had on evolutionary theory through both his professional and popular works [Shermer , 2003]. That philosophy can best be summed up in frequently cited by Gould: 'All observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service'. This quotation is from Charles Darwin. 

Shermer MB. This view of science: Stephen Jay Gould as historian of science and scientific historian, popular scientist and scientific popularizer. Soc Stud Sci. 2002 Aug;32(4):489-524.

Dear Francesca. About philosophy said " ... the latter is free, at Disposal of Every1, and universal."

It is not that simple. It needs X-factor (creativity, depth, originality, ...) and not everyone possess them!

Everybody has an X-factor accepting there are different types of X (X1, X2, X3, ....... XInfinite)?

Dear  Marcel I was talking solely about X-factor related to  philosophy  only (creativity, depth, originality, ..) not science or mathematics. I still think these factors are not thought or possessed. Some people have it, I don't. So it can not go to infinity (XInfinite) in this case.

Mahmoud,

We are all homo sapiens sapiens and basically the same.  We can all run although some of us (Ethiopian, Somalian, Jamaican,...) are a bit faster. But the determining factor for running for the average human is not his/her biology or gender but the amount of practice per week.  The same with the X-factor.  The determining factor is the amount of practice per week.  It is like any muscle, practice it and it grows.  Neglect it and it shrinks.  

They both refer to knowledge in a generic sense. Probably main differences may be found on some problems treated and principally on the level of abstraction.

According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy  “Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with reality, existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language.” According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science  “Science (from Latin scientia, meaning "knowledge") is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe.”

In other words: Both faces of several coins (I agree with Kamal, but in plural, and with Louis). The levels of abstraction considered are normally very different.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science

Philosophy has created and is still creating the basic intellectual ground of all the sciences.  When a part of philosophy is clear enough to allow experimentation it automatically become a science.  But the sciences that are created always need some of its scientists to remain speculative for the next big steps to be done on its boundaries.  These speculative scientists are doing philosophy.  But the task of the bigger philosophers is to get through informed speculation a global picture of the world and of ourselve.  Some of the bigger modern philosophers such as Kant or Husserl wrongly tried to emulated the accuracy of science and mathematics and come up with a priori knowledges that was as accurate in its own domain as science is in the empirical domains.  It is wrong because philosophy cannot be accurate but this is not a failure nor a default or an inferior quality compared with mathematic or the empirical sciences.  Our intellect can only go to the frontier through creative speculations and this is philosophy.  The situation at the frontier will always be confused and speculative and uncertain.  

Dear Louis ,

Maybe we can say reality and speculation are the outcomes of these two school of taught: Science and Philosophy. Sir Humphry Davy said "Fortunately science, like that nature to which it belongs, is neither limited by time nor by space. It belongs to the world, and is of no country and of no age. The more we know, the more we feel our ignorance; the more we feel how much remains unknown; and in philosophy, the sentiment of the Macedonian hero can never apply,- there are always new worlds to conquer" 

Mahmoud,

I agree but for me there is no two school of thought but only one with some parts more mature and called sciences.

Dear Louis, Same as with me, I hope. keep your fingers cross.

Dear Roland,

Thank you for complete comparison. Some may argue that “science progresses and philosophy doesn't”  but there is some commonality between the two. As I highlighted in my question: "Philosophy examines the 'why', whereas science examines the 'how'. Science observes nature, creates predictive mathematical models from the observations, and uses those models to explain the how.  But philosophy, on the other hand, can provide answers to untestable questions.

Roland,

''The centralizing market decentres the psyche.''

Very well said.

 I think that it had to be this way.  The centralisation of the common human body had to start with the lower psyche instincts related to primary needs.  The global human organism will evolve its higher functions such taking care of all the children, taking care of them physically but mostly through the cultivation of their mind, taking care of all old peoples not only of their bodies but all their social needs, taking care of our environment so we do not undermine the ground of our existence, forcasting livable global scenario and organise globally for achieving them, and doing all that not through stupid centralized planning but as a global human organism,  and philosophy's role is to help us see the past in such a way as this is possible.

William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)

THE SECOND COMING

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

They both hang on search for and validate truth. Philosophy champions and affirms truth as the ultimate virtue and best qualities of things through reasoning while science searches truth of nature through empirical tests and practical means using scientific principles and mathematical theories, with somehow overlapping and non overlapping parts.   

Dear All,

Est philosophia ancilla theologiae? Is sciencia ancilla philosophiae? Historically the relationship of philosophy and science has been intricate and many-sided. Many mediocre philosophers were not outstanding scientists but the best and most original scientists have had deep philosophical ideas e.g. Aristotle, Avicenna, Descartes, Leibnitz. I think philosophy and science have had an innate and mutual relationship: both influenced each other and they contributed to the development of the other. Each scientist does arrive the point where s/he should unwillingly deal with philosophical issues. If not, there is an immense lack of…

Pioneers of the Scientific Revolution were themselves philosophers (e.g. Francis Bacon, E.A. Burtt's ). Scientists were originally known as natural philosophers. Science itself relies upon philosophical presuppositions like the existence of the external world, the orderly nature of that external world, the existence of truth, the laws of logic, the reliability of our cognitive and sensory faculties, etc. in order to function at all. Philosophy of mind and the scientific study of consciousness are two fields that interact closely on an unresolved issue and present an interesting history of how philosophy and science work together. Philosophy is the formalization of intuition. Science is the formalization of evidence. Philosophers articulate the intuitions they've captured with language. Scientists articulate the evidence they've gathered with mathematics making them universally compatible with other evidence. Philosophy is mostly abduction followed by deduction. Science is mostly abstraction followed by deduction. Philosophy gives a scientist the ability to think beyond what is observable. Science gives a philosopher the ability to identify what is real. Both science and philosophy go well together.

Dear YOGESH,

Thank you for summarizing the similarities between the science and philosophy. But what about the differences? Even though philosophy and the sciences are both intellectual activities, but philosophy is not a science. They have same goal, but they do not have the same purpose. The purpose of philosophy is understanding and purpose of the sciences is knowledge. Scientists seek knowledge for the sake of knowledge, but philosophers seek knowledge for the sake of understanding.

Science: knowledge for knowledge

Philosophy: knowledge for understanding

Yogesh,

'Science is the formalization of evidence''.   The empirical facts do not directly provide their formalisation and so scientists have to rely (like the philosophers ) on their intuition in order to create the formalisation.  The philosophical discourse are preliminary attempts for formalisations which cannot yet be expressed into the scientific language.  Sometime for this to happen, the scientific language can be expanded with new formalisation concepts.  The process of discovery is cyclical in the sense that it is a gradual evolution from the realm of vague formalisation to clear (scientific) formalisation.  And intuition is require at every clarification step.  The boundary between these two realms is when the clarification is clear enough for empirical testing to begin to guide the process.  Bot philosophical formalisation and scientific formalisation are abstraction.  Any language expression is in the realm of abstraction.  

The most basic mistake is to think that the relam of narrative about reality IS reality.  The realm of narrative is possible because human can generate narrative from their live experience and interpret other narrative in terms of their live experience.  So the source and destinations of narratives are in live experiences.  It is where they are discovered and it is where they are understood and it is where reality is.

You tell that to the man of the street and he will say, is'nt it obvious?  But what is obvious for the man in the street is'nt for the philosophers and the scientists whose scientific training has been to give up the felf experience and see it as an illusion and replace it with objective knowledge.  What is abstract and remote from life for the untrained person because unaturally natural for the trained person in objectivation.  We are born in the life world and we are at home with it and the day we learn a language, the day we enter school, the day we enter university and graduate studies are days we learn to push it further away and live into a substitute which is more natural with the trained intellect.  About the middle of the 19th century a number of philosophers such as Dilthey, Husserl, Bergson have realized that all of philosophy had fallen into a purely intellectual construction which had totally hide the human experience that had created the construction and in the name of objectivity had been hidden away as not relevant.  But these philosophers have started to examine this so-called objective world that natural philsophy and science was building and began to unconver the conceilment of the life world as the fundation of the narrative world.  The tunnelling vision of science which constantly conceil the observer because in search of an universal knowledge that do not depend on observer that is valid for a formatted observer which we can hide.  This tunnelling vision which called illusonary all that cannot be objectify because it involve an intrinsic individually, it involved a specific personal history that cannot be universal has to deem of no interest because it cannot allow prediction and is not universal knowledge.  Training consist in being trained to conceal and after a while it become the natural world and there is no life in it because it is a conceptual world that does not see its connection to the part of the body in the life world.

Francesca,

Thank you.  You probably know Alan Watts. The cause of and cure for the illusion of separateness.  I ask himself the question: Is my ''I'' what is inside this bag of skin?  This illusion of separateness that various love experiences dissipate but which come back very quickly in this type of  jungle society we live in.

Dear @Francesca,

Thank you for your answer. You should be thankful to God who gave you such a spiritual mind . To find a better picture of the physical realm, one must move beyond the confines of the rational physical world. In math we have theorem known as Godel's theorem which says it is not possible to know everything about a particular situation from within that situation. So, in order to be able to do that one need to be in a position outside the arena of specified activity.

Dear @Francesca

What you are saying "which is the Mind that guide Philosophers? Which is the Mind that guide Scientists?"  is not the intention here (in this question), as we are not mind readers. One can also argue that both have same minds since birth. Therefore, you should have rather looked at the philosophical thoughts (than mind) as it is this 'taught' that bring insights to human existence and for which science, alike, is in favor of it. Anyway, It looks the main point of the question which is about the connection between science and philosophy is fading away, so we should not go any further in that direction. Thank you.

Francesca,

Just google Youtube Alan Watts.  They are a lot of radio broadcast recording of Alan Watts.  I think you might appreciate his reflections.

Regards

Philosophy of Science. The main occupation of a scientist is problem solving with the goal of understanding the Universe. In a way it is like a ``candle in the dark'' to illuminate irrational beliefs or superstitions. It is also a dialogue between mankind and Nature, but it is far from a perfect instrument of knowledge. Yet,  science provides something that other philosophies fail to, concrete results.

Dear Francesca thinks "Science, and I observe it daily, has destroyed our World and our Humanity, ..."  If that is correct then, are not we (you and me) part of it or guilty?  I think we should not think so negatively. Science made lots of advances in medicine, engineering, day to day living standards, communications, etc. 

A cause and effect relation exists between Philosophy and Science. Philosophy is the question and Science is the answer.

Dear Roland,

My guide in philosophy of science is Michael Polanyi. His philosophy is philosophy of science is centered not on the actual scientific knowledge but on the process by which we discover it through our personal consciousness. The process of discovery as described by Polanyi is the normal human perceptual process but applied in the practice of science.  How do you learn to walk, or to ride a bike.  You did learn to do these things but you cannot afterward tell all what you are doing for doing them.  You have a personal tacit knowledge of how you do them but you do not have an explicit knowledge of how you do them.  Close observation of the phenomena allow our consciousness to gradually penetrate the surface of what is directly observe towards the underlying simpler mechanism generating the phenomena.  This is made possible because it is the natural human way to perceive anything that we perceive.  But as most of what we perceive, we tacitly know how to do it but not explicitly know.  It is why scientific discovery proceed in two phases, a first phase of tacit knowing, tacit penetration to the underlying mechanism by observation of the phenomena follow by explicit expression of this tacit knowledge and here it is the natural process of language generation which is at work.  There are several consequences of this way of understanding scientific discovery.  One relate to this thread is that discovery is always from the vague to the more precise through cycle of tacit learning and explicit expression.  It also put close observation guided by intuition center stage.  It also encourage thrusting our intuitions prior that we develop an explicit expression of the personal/tacit knowledge giving rise to these intuitions.  It shows that passion is absolutely necessary in the poursuit of our intuitions.  Finally it is against doubt as the central epistemological attitude because it kill the driving force of following our intuitions in spite of the fact that we cannot intially explain the rational of our search.  But the most important consequence of this philosophy is the realisation that discovery is not a intellectual explicit process but a sub-conscious perceptual process and only the expression of the discovery is an explicit intellectual operation.  So whey you want to understand something , do not try to explain it, just observe it and be convince that your observation will penetrate the phenomena and thrust the process of discovery.  There is no method in discovery, the whole things is similar to the way you learn walking when you were kid.  The scientificc method is the biggest myth of science.  There is a scientific language, there are scientific method of testing, there are scientific discusssion but there is not scientific method of discovery, just the old natural method of growing new skills, new perception that all children master so well.  So we have to unlearn that there is a method of discovery and just be like kids.

Five pillars of philosophy:

1) Metaphysics - the study of hte fundamental nature of reality and existence and of the essences of things; often subdivided into: Ontogeny - which is the study of being and Cosmology - the study fo the physical universe;

2) Epistemology - the study of nature, basis, and extent of knowledge;

3) Logic - the study of the principles and methods of reasoning (inductive and deductive);

4) Ethics - the study of human conduct, character and values (relativism, objectivism and subjectivism);

5) Aesthetics - the study of the creation and principles of art and beauty, and of thoughts, feelings and attitudes.

Contrary to what is said I think philosophy is not based on a mere observation only. If philosophy leads to wisdom and udnerstanding, there must be a method by which this occurs. Knowledge, the foundation of wisdom and understanding, is obtained in a variety of ways. Intuition, authority, experience, and logic are all methods of obtaining knowledge. Intuition lacks objectivity and cannot be measured in a mechanistic paradigm. Authority is subject to bias and misinterpretation. Experience through the senses may be subject to interpretive errors. Logic provides a means for determining whether the purported conclusion of an argument really does follow from the premises. Through deductive reasoning based on a predetermined set of laws or inductive reasoning based on empirical observation, so logic may prove a potentially fallible source of knowledge. The essence of the scientific method is the testable hypothesis. 

Science and philosophy have always learned from each other. Philosophy tirelessly draws from scientific discoveries fresh strength, material for broad generalisations, while to the sciences it imparts the world-view and methodological impulses of its universal principles. Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought. So the connection between philosophy and science is mutual and characterised by their ever deepening interaction.

Dear YOGESH,

Yes It should be mutual. For instance, the links between Computer Science and Philosophy are broad and deep, extending well beyond the obvious overlaps in logic, artificial intelligence, ethics and robotics. They share a broad focus on the representation of information and rational inference, embracing common interests in algorithms, cognition, intelligence, language, proof, verification, etc. Some of the greatest philosophers of the past — from Aristotle to Turing — dreamed of automated reasoning and what this might achieve.

Dear All, 

By now we know that science is roughly: (sensory) evidence and reason, whereas philosophy often omits the latter. So, do you think any question that cannot be *”truly”* answered by science, can be addressed by philosophy? For instance, ‘why are things this way, rather than that?'  Remember, my question:Philosophy examines the 'why', whereas science examines the 'how'.  Is it then correct to ask that science never tries to answer any question starting with “why” in any circumstances. 

Mahmoud,

Sometime the state of the research in a given science shows some contradictions or problem with the philosophical framework of this science and then forcing a philosophical review of this framework, a redefining of the most important concepts, a reframing of the problems  and then normal science (Kuhn) can follows.

Sometime a small group of  scientists in a discipline become disatisfy the current philosophical framework of this scientific field because they find it too narrow too embrace what the field should embrace.  These scientists then need to philosophical reframe the field so that it can take into consideration wider field of phenomena.

I disagree that philosophy examines the 'why' whereas science examines the `how`. First philosophy is not a discipline or a domain of research.  Second science is solution of problems within a pre-establish philosophical framework.  Large progress in science are always philosophical because they are at the level of establishing the philosophical scientific framework.  

Mahmoud,

Lets discuss this properly. So far I have not convince you and you have not convince me.  Lets see if we can come closer.  Lets clarify this situation.  

There is not a single science which was not first defined philosophically.  To do so, the self-evident phenomena had be explored philosophically and only when that exploration was advanced enough could the ideas on these phenomena precise enough to be tested empirically and only at the stage we can qualified the philosophical exploration to be scientific.  What science explored were first explore and define by philosophy.

So Science = precise philosophy that can be tested or falsified.   

Louis, could the ideas on these phenomena precise enough to be tested empirically? Yes, a good scientific theory can always make predictions that can be empirically tested

Dear Mahmoud,

All our ideas about what good science should be, what differentiate a philosophical idea that is scientific from one that is not, falsifiability is one of them, all of these are philosophical ideas which cannot be falsified. But some core physical principle such the conservation of energy or the increase of entropy in closed systems are more scientifically certain than specific theory but are not falsibiable themself. My point here is not to say that these two principle are doubtfull .  They are not.  The point is to show that the critera of falsibiability is not applicable to all philosophical ideas that are scientific.  

Dear Louis,

Some philosophers like Popper argue that science must be falsifiable. This is often epitomized in Wolfgang Pauli famously saying, of an argument that fails to be scientific because it cannot be falsified by experiment, "it is not only not right, it is not even wrong!" Nevertheless, many contemporary philosophers of science and analytic philosophers are strongly critical of Popper's philosophy of science. Popper's mistrust of inductive reasoning has led to claims that he misrepresents scientific practice. Among the professional philosophers of science, the Popperian view has never been seriously preferred to probabilistic induction, which is the mainstream account of scientific reasoning.

There are many criticisms to Popper view, though. Adherents of Popper speak with disrespect of "professional philosophy", for example W. W. Bartley: Popper is not really a participant in the contemporary professional philosophical dialogue; quite the contrary, he has ruined that dialogue. If he is on the right track, then the majority of professional philosophers the world over have wasted or are wasting their intellectual careers. The gulf between Popper's way of doing philosophy and that of the bulk of contemporary professional philosophers is as great as that between astronomy and astrology.

Dear Mahmoud,

Debating the merit of Popper's philosophy of science is a philosophical debate. Popper is far from being a marginal philosopher of science. His influence on actual first rank scientists is very High.  Check two example: Lee Smolin and David Deutsch. The principle of falsifiability is a very usefull one.  I am closer to Michael Polanyi which share some characteristic with Popper: against positivist, inductive .  But Polanyi was against external critera such as falsifiability and was for the recognition of personal intuitive aspect of the scientific search.  Bartley was much too harch on Popper because of personal conflict between the two.  It is not because Popper is not perfect and is wrong in some aspect that its contribution is not valuable.

Dear Louis,

Is mathematics "science"? Many philosophers believe that mathematics is not experimentally falsifiable, and thus not a science according to the definition of Popper. But Einstein wrote [1]: "One reason why mathematics enjoys special esteem, above all other sciences, is that its laws are absolutely certain and indisputable, while those of other sciences are to some extent debatable and in constant danger of being overthrown by newly discovered facts."

[1] Albert Einstein (1923). "Geometry and Experience". Sidelights on relativity. Courier Dover Publications. p. 27. Reprinted by Dover (2010), ISBN 978-0-486-24511-9.

Mahmoud,

Mathematics at the origin was part of the first large scale states integrated in the accounting practices and  engineering practices, measurement of the land (geometry). The first great founders of modern sciences were called geometers.  We have to wait the middle off the 19th century for meet people doing only the mathematical research part.  From about 600 BC (Thales) mathematic start to separate from the actual practice and so to gain an autonomy and it is the axiomatic method who allowed that. It is a special science in that it does not directly study reality but it study the forms and their construction and manipulation. It is the science of forms.

Dear Louis, Actually, methods of the mathematical sciences are applied in constructing and testing scientific models dealing with observable reality.

“The difference between science and philosophy is that the scientist learns more and more about less and less until he/she knows everything about nothing, whereas a philosopher learns less and less about more and more until he/she knows nothing about everything” – Dorion Sagan

Dear Yogesh,

Thank you for your answer. Here I quote something that binds everything together: Informing Your Own Core Beliefs You Cannot Separate Religion, Science, Philosophy And History.

Yogesh,

Philosophy's job is trying to understand but it become sciences in little islands where it reaches enough accuracty for empirical inquiries or theoretical inquiries but even in these small islands those trying to expand it are philosopher-scientists.  but the bulk of philosophy is totally outside the islands of philosophical-scientific inquiry and it is trying to show the underlying continents whose islands are the peaks of the mountains for bringing these continents in the open for empirical and theoretical inquiries and the philosopher scientists always prefer either the open ocean with sonar equipments to detect some underlying continents or the border town in the archipelado of science leaving the well settled towns for the settlers type of scientists who prefer to focus on work of paving the road and embillishing these selltements.

Science is about finding the truth as it is, not as we wish it to be. John Dewey held that inquiry, whether scientific, technical, sociological, philosophical or cultural, is self-corrective over time if openly submitted for testing by a community of inquirers in order to clarify, justify, refine and/or refute proposed truths.

Mahmoud,

Philosophy and its scientific island are about finding the truth as it is but we knows we will never reach '' the truth as it is'' but we know we have to keep searching.

An old Persian fable: Nake Truth

Truth and Falsehood wentfor a swim together, leaving their clothes on shore. Falsehood, coming out of the water first, puts on Truth’s clothes. Truth, being what it is, absolutely refused to wear Falsehood’s clothes, thus remained naked. Ever since then, Falsehood, appearing as Truth, has been accepted as Truth, while Truth still awaits to be seen.

Mahmoud,

About 6 billion years ago, our solar system was a second generation nebular within which our sun and planet were forming.  About four billion year ago the surface ofthis planet became solid and the surface was bombarded by meteorites.  The primitive oceans were evaporating on a regular basis from these collision.  But just a bit after that phase about 3.85 billion years ago some primitive forms of life evolved.  We do not really understand how it happened.  We just have a bunch of speculations.  But what is not a speculation is that 4 billion years ago there was no life on this planet and now life is florishing and in between a lot of evolution had to take place.  The modern biological synthesis cannot explain many aspects of this evolution but what is not debatable is that this evolution occured.  We have a lot to do in order to understand how exactly it took place and why it took place.  We are presently building giant new telescopes which are design to detect life in planets in other solar systems in our galaxy and we will in our lifetime experimentally know if the emergence of life is frequent in this galaxy in billion of other star systems.  

Newton could by a simple law explains the movements of the planets in the solar system with an amazing accuracy.  Explaining the biological evolution of life is not going to be that easy and we are never going to explain everything in it.  Compare to two hundred years ago, we know enormously more on the biological evolution of life but we are extremely far from understand it fully.  That someone can point at different aspects of life that are not explain yet, is not surprising given the extreme complexity of the phenomena of the 3.7 billion years of evolution of life.  That being said, admitting our relative state of ignorance is not to say that we understand nothing and that evolution did not occur.   Do you agree with me on that.  I think that there are a huge diversity of scientific opinions but doubting even that evolution took place is not reasonable at all today.  Two hundred years ago, there was only a minority of scientists that believe in biological evolution but today it is 99.99% percent.  There is a good consensus on this.  

Mahmoud,

I agree it is not the topic but it was you that brought it up in your previous post. There is no consensus on many aspects of evolution but evolution is the core belief of science.  We have not work out this core belief but it is the core central belief that the cosmos evolved and that life evolved.  This is the core naturalist position and someone cannot called himself a scientist which used to be called natural philosopher if the person is not faithfull to the core belief. I expect a muslin to believe in Allah, this is the core belief.  I thus expect a scientist to belief in evolution of nature.  This is the core belief.  I do not see any contradiction in between the two beliefs, some do and it is ok but I personnally see none.

Dear Mahmoud,

In the controversy, you took side! I think when isolated from "creationist propaganda and distortion," the Theory of Evolution by natural selection is easy to understand

and easy to accept.In science there is no place for religious matters. I suggest to read some books of the opposite side, which is much more scientific.

• [David_Mills]_Atheist_Universe.
• LYNN MARGULIS AND DORION SAGAN Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature.

Furthermore the paper you cited makes a  vote against muslims. From this I understand the nature of their arguments.

Dear Costas,

Both religion and science present different but valid approaches to knowledge. Accordingly, it is important to understand both. There are many reasons, books, etc to think otherwise to what you said, too! See for instance the attached link by Henry M. Morris "The Scientific Case Against Evolution", and the references therein.

Since there is no real scientific evidence that evolution is occurring at present or ever occurred in the past, it is reasonable to conclude that evolution is not a fact of science, as many claim. In fact, it is not even science at all, but an arbitrary system built upon faith in universal naturalism.

Takahata (1995) found that even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the processes of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination.

N. A. Takahata, "Genetic Perspective on the Origin and History of Humans," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics (vol. 26, 1995), p. 343.

http://www.icr.org/home/resources/resources_tracts_scientificcaseagainstevolution/

Humans communicates through different realm of narratives.  Each realm of narrative evolved through a societal human tradition of interpretation of these narratives.  Religious narratives, philosophical narratives, scientific narratives, fictional narratives.  A person grow up within many of these narrative realms corresponding to different realm of human experience.  These different realms have evolved to satisfy different realm of human experience.  If my four year old son ask me if I love him, I will say ''yes papa love you with all its heart''.  I will not go and speak with my four year old son in terms of the scientific narrative:  ''Sorry son, I look in all books and nowhere I could see a good definition of love.  So to be honest, I cannot say that I love you.  I read in some biological book that loving is not really loving but caring for my offspring so I can spread my genes, caring is not really caring but egoistic animal impulse trigger by my genes so they spread, etc etc etc.''  It is obvious that the scientific narrative is not appropriate nor conceive to be used in my relationship with my young son.  It cannot be used for a lot of human relationship nor was it design to be used for these relationship.  

Dear Louis,

The question of unity engaged science and philosophy alike. Can the various natural sciences (physics, astronomy, chemistry, biology) be unified into a single overarching theory, and can theories within a single science (e.g., general relativity and quantum theory in physics) be unified?

Carnap has a positivist view of unity of science, and specifically with the thesis about a universal language, whereas Popper was defending a methodological criterion to demarcate science from metaphysics based on the falsifiability of all genuinely scientific propositions, Carnap and Neurath took the ideal of unified science to have deep social and political significance against metaphysics. 

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-unity/