Philosophy is the science that tries to formulate a deeper coherence of the wealth of experiences of both human/social existence and physical reality
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Russo & readers,
In the English-speaking world it is customary to distinguish the natural and social sciences from the "liberal arts," and philosophy belongs to the "humanities" and liberal arts. Philosophy is, then, not a science.
This tradition contrasts with some continental ways of thought based on the concept of "Geisteswissenschaften" (and similar concepts). Since, say, in German, "Philosophie" counts to the Geisteswissenschaften," it counts to the "Wissenschaften," which term is usually translated by the English "science."
Obviously, in any language, philosophy has its more scientific concerns, as in the philosophy of science. But a good professional training in philosophy reaches across the distinction between the sciences and liberal arts. Consider, say, philosophy of science (or even philosophy of physics) vs. say, aesthetics or philosophy of law or political philosophy. There is a "philosophy of" any science you'd think to mention and equally a "philosophy of" any scholarly discipline.
However philosophy is characterized in relation to science, it is generally agreed that it has a list of sub-disciplines, including history of philosophy, logic, metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, aesthetic, etc.
H.G. Callaway
Unfortunately philosophy existed long before sciences. So what our honoured colleague does is to re-interpret philosophy through sciences. But philosophy was the basic condition for science, not in reverse.
Philosophy is not a science, but it is a presupposition for scientific thought.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear all,
I think we are still lacking an agreed definition of "science." Certainly, in English, one first thinks of the natural sciences--physics, chemistry biology, etc.
We seem to also stand in need of some clarification of the claims that philosophy is a "basic condition" or a "presupposition for scientific thought." What does this mean? Would it imply that philosophy (somehow) knows more about the validity of scientific claims than do the scientific specialists themselves?
A narrower claim would be, for instance that philosophy first proposed a substantial rule of reason over belief. Few doubt, I think that philosophy existed before the sciences? But haven't the sciences and the scholarly disciplines elaborated our concept of reason in their various fields? Doesn't philosophy, borrow as much as it provides --say, as in empiricism, after Newton or after Darwin, or perhaps systematic theology after the 19th-century "higher criticism"?
H.G. Callaway
Cult and technics, early calculus and numbering precede philosophy and science in my opinion. In early 'magical' thinking everything was still in-differentiate. In astrology and also for Pythagoras what we would call science today was in natural continuation with a belief in a higher order of the cosmos. (And even still Newton spent most of his time with alchemy.)
Philosophy was the attempt to bring order into the different domains of human belief, wisdom, knowledge. I think Plato first discussed concepts like being, intellect, soul, nature, theory and praxis and wrote down definitions of the words. Concepts of Greek philosophy very much marked the following developments.
Science is what can be 'known' by us. But what to 'know' means is simultaneously clarified by philosophy. Science, at least methodologically, is shaped by this philosophical and rational way of thinking. Other traditions marked occidental culture as well and conceive truth differently.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Krantz & readers,
"Science" in English, derives from the Latin word for knowledge. But it seems, perhaps, too broad to say that "Science is what can be known by us." Science, or natural science in particular is distinguished by its methods, including hypothesis, quantification, observation and experimentation. Social science by its nature involves somewhat less experimentation. We do speak of experimental psychology, though.
There are many things which we know, that do not belong to science--or not obviously: Say, that Smith likes to laugh a lot. or Jones' cat doesn't like dry cat food. The neighbor on the right is a better gardener than the neighbor on the left. --etc., etc., lots of unrelated details of life. Some such things might find a place in some science or other but likely won't.
My claim was that philosophy is an "art," --one of the "liberal arts." Likewise, .e.g., history belongs to the liberal arts, but history is not a science--though it may be very systematic. (One may say, though, that it is a scholarly discipline.) The interests of philosophy range over the sciences and scholarly disciplines and their subject-matters. Philosophy can be more or less systematic in approach; but the great philosophical systems of the past, though sometimes inspirational--even great intellectual adventures--, are chiefly included in the realm of false starts. We have to know the history of philosophy in order to avoid its errors.
H.G. Callaway
Metaphysics used to be central to philosophy, until the Russel, Wittgenstein gang
supported by the earlier Voltair, and some attempts of Husserl to convert to a science started disrupting.
Science itself came under scrutiny as having more uncertainty than previously thought. Popper, Kuhn etc.
The outcome is still uncertain.
I do not think that a mystical metaphysical vein can ever be entirely excluded by what one calls science.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Weisz & readers,
Philosophy as an academic discipline is very broad. It includes a bit of everything. In consequence you may find "mystical and metaphysical" philosophies and philosophers. I don't think anyone is capable of generally excluding philosophies they don't care for. That is not to say that the differing "schools" or directions of philosophy can easily engage with each other. Though philosophy aims to be universal, this is often little more than a pious hope; and underlying cultural difference get philosophical expression. In consequence, we have, e.g., the history of "British empiricism" vs. "continental rationalism," and more recently, "analytic philosophy' vs. "continental philosophy." It is sometimes said, only half in jest, that the English channel is wider than the Atlantic.
I don't believe for a moment that philosophy can be "converted" into a science of any sort. But notice again, the "science" vs. "Wissenschaft" divide mentioned above. Should we regard any systematic discipline as a "science"? Is e.g., "Literaturwissenschaft" a science? Look again at our question:
Is Philosophy a Science? If yes, what kind of Science?
We need to know what the word "science" mean in this question.
If we have learned that the natural sciences have "more uncertainty than previously thought," then it can be argued that this is something learned from natural science itself --by closely attending to its history and development. But on the other hand, we might also ask, "More uncertain than who thought?" Personally, at least, I never thought that the natural sciences had as much "certainty" as sometimes attributed. This image of science was likely taken over uncritically from the early 20th-century positivists.
Lastly, as an apparent advocate of metaphysics, what exactly do you expect from it, and what is its relation to theory of knowledge? Does philosophy of science belong to the theory of knowledge, and does it extend or develop traditional conceptions of knowledge? What seems to linger is the notion that theory of knowledge must be something known a priori and independently. But if we learn anything about knowledge from the sciences, then that would seem to be simply a false assumption.
H.G. Callaway
What we know as 'scientific method' is formulated basically by philosophers.
Philosophy is not a science, because it lacks the ability to refute (or support) an hypothesis by means of repeatable, reproducible experiments. Philosophy does produce conceptual maps of the world (frameworks for understanding), and entries in those conceptual maps do end up in science. Examples from the history of philosophy include atoms (in the sense of indivisible elements) and the ether (the carrier for all waves). The transition from philosophy to science is in my view turning a proposition (supported by logical argument) into something testable. Both philosophy and science need mental ingenuity, but a philosopher is not constrained by the community view of what is supported by experiment and what should be rejected.
If Nuclear Energy and Astronautics were 'reproducible experiments', they failed and caused a damage of trillions of Euros for 400! generations.
If there was any rational ' community view' on this outcome, both would be immediately cancelled.
By counter Philosophy works with mind experiments that cause less costs and damages.
I'll give you one:
What is the likelihood of your own existence?
- One to one because I 'exist'
- One to 13 millions (lottery)
- One out of 7.7 billion (humans in the World) X one out of 8 million species x one out of 300.000 inhabited planets in the Milky Way
Science and philosophy have the same purpose, the same goal: to discover how the universe is made and how it works. Philosophy pursues this objective through pure thought and elaborates logically, self-coherent and self-consistent, philosophical theories (thoughts and conceptions). Science elaborates its own theories also called hypotheses and often adopts theories elaborated by the philosophers. Science submits its hypotheses and philosophical theories to the Galilean laws: reproducibility, verifiability and falsifiability.
Philosophy is not a science, a all subjects can be philosophical.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Kovalets & readers,
Philosophers may chiefly formulate what we know as scientific method, but this is done on the basis of study of the practices of the sciences. In this work, the scientists themselves also sometime put on their philosophy "hats."
This is analogous to the work of the lexicographer, in formulating dictionary definitions. The definitions formulated cannot be arbitrary or independent of the empirical evidence of usage --which is laboriously collected and summarized. (Still the formulations may count as hypotheses in relation to the evidence of usage.)
Likewise, the philosopher of science relies on the evidence of the successful methods in the sciences--"success" being chiefly judged by the sciences themselves on empirical grounds. That is why the contributions of philosophy of science to the theory of knowledge cannot be regarded as a priori.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
What we know as 'scientific method' is formulated basically by philosophers.
Philosophy is a logical structure for better understanding of science.
Looking at the history of western philosophy, philosophy just was science for most of the time. Just to take one example, the title of Newton’s monumental book reads: Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis. He was concerned with natural philosophy. Apparently, the term ‘science’ didn’t really came into use until the nineteenth century when the sub disciplines became so successful that specialization was necessary (“One gentleman cannot know it all”).
As a teacher of mine put it in a lecture: Since then, some parts of what one may count as theoretical philosophy (metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind. etc) have ventured rather far from the methods of the sciences and , according to him, it is not so clear if this has been beneficial for philosophy.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Mazur & readers,
Perhaps you mean to say that philosophy of science "is a logical structure for better understanding of science"? (Philosophy, in general, is much broader.)
Perhaps. But you leave us to puzzle out the meaning of "logical structure." Nothing against non-technical use of "structure," but the concept has many variations.
Regarding scientific methods, perhaps we would prefer to say that philosophy of science formulates concepts, or conceptual approaches to the understanding of the sciences? (The various sciences are not, after all, completely uniform.) This would include such concepts as "explanation," "prediction," "theory," "experiment," "confirmation," "counter-example," perhaps "empirical adequacy," or comprehension in relation to the range of evidence?, etc. (Interesting side question: Does Darwinian evolution provide any predictions?)
The use of "structure," as in the variations of structuralism, might suggest very general hypotheses --open to evaluation in the course of empirical-theoretical developments. For example, Newton's concepts of absolute time, everywhere ticking along at just the same rate, and space as a uniform Euclidean "container" of events, might be regarded as very high-level "structures" or hypotheses of Newtonian physics--now surrendered.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
Philosophy is a logical structure for better understanding of science.
One should not mix up science, natural science, exact science.
Some consider ontology (the study of being as being) to be an exact science: you don't rely on empirical observation. But then I am not sure that it can completely be formalized?
Philosophy does not reduce to philosophy of science. There are many currents. To give a few examples: Solipsism does not need an exterior world. For idealism spirit is everything and not matter. For Malebranche's occasionalism there is no physical causality, God manages the totality of all events in the world. We are too much used to materialistic monism, which has become the "official" doctrine.
Dear colleagues,
let me, please, introduce an example:
"Franz Clemens Brentano (1838–1917) is mainly known for his work in philosophy of psychology, especially for having introduced the notion of intentionality to contemporary philosophy. He made important contributions to many fields in philosophy, especially to the philosophy of mind, metaphysics and ontology, ethics, logic, the history of philosophy, and philosophical theology. Brentano was strongly influenced by Aristotle and the Scholastics as well as by the empiricist and positivist movements of the early nineteenth century. Due to his introspectionist approach of describing consciousness from a first person point of view, on one hand, and his rigorous style as well as his contention that philosophy should be done with exact methods like the natural sciences, on the other, Brentano is often considered a forerunner of both the phenomenological movement and the tradition of analytic philosophy. A charismatic teacher, Brentano exerted a strong influence on the work of Edmund Husserl, Alexius Meinong, Christian von Ehrenfels, Kasimir Twardowski, Carl Stumpf, and Anton Marty, among others, and thereby played a central role in the philosophical development of central Europe in the early twentieth century".
Chapter Franz Brentano (Stanford Encyclopedia): new updated version
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Krantz & readers,
It was the American monist, physicalist and behaviorist, W.V. Quine who famously said, "Philosophy of science is philosophy enough."
I think we all beg to differ. That was, approximately, the point of the famous "pluralist" revolt in the American Philosophical Association of several decades back.
Of course, anti-empirical philosophy is still philosophy. But wouldn't the Aristotelian study of "being qua being," run up against the objection that "existence is not a predicate"? Notice that in contemporary logic, existence appears as the existential quantifier: "(Ex)" --"there is something (or other) x, such that..."
H.G. Callaway
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Russo & readers,
Thanks for your quotation on Brentano.
I studied Brentano early on, with a particular focus on the notion of intentionality. I particularly liked the Aristotelian character of Brentano's work, but this did not lead on to any significant interest in phenomenology. Instead, I was more interested in psychology as a science and the role of "intentionality" (or, as I'd rather say, intentional or representational realism--as contrasted with versions of behaviorism in particular.
Brentano's influence in recent American philosophy was chiefly carried by the Brown University philosopher, Rodrick Chisholm (1916-1999).
See:
http://www.informationphilosopher.com/solutions/philosophers/chisholm/
I intend no general endorsement of Chisholm, accept to say that he was quite influential. Readers with an interest in Brentano should be aware of Chisholm's role in the revival of interest in his work and in the background of analytical interest in intentional content.
H.G. Callaway
Dear H.G. Callaway and readers,
'Being' should not be mixed up with 'existence'. I am really novice in this question, but I think being (french être, german sein, greek on) is of the domain of what makes something what it is, its essence. In the essence is not yet contained the existence for nearly all being. (A number, a ratio, a human being, an animal, the soul has an essence that it would have independently of its existence). Only for God essence and existence cannot be separated.
Hope I explain correctly. Philosophy is not my profession.
Tom Krantz
"Philo" = friend and "sophia" = wisdom is all arts and sciences, basically exercise of the mind.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Krantz & readers,
Some etymology of "existence" might be helpful:
existence (n.)
late 14c., "reality," from Old French existence, from Medieval Latin existentia/exsistentia, from existentem/exsistentem(nominative existens/exsistens) "existent," present participle of Latin existere/exsistere "stand forth, come out, emerge; appear, be visible, come to light; arise, be produced; turn into," and, as a secondary meaning, "exist, be;" from ex "forth" (see ex-) + sistere "cause to stand," from PIE *si-st-, reduplicated form of root *sta- "to stand, make or be firm."
---End quotation
See:
https://www.etymonline.com/word/existence
I'm reminded of the common Italian exchange, "Come sta?"--"Sta bene." ="Es geht (mir) gut." which verb apparently derives from the Proto-indo-European root (PIE). The corresponding noun comes out in English as "stand," maybe "state." Consulting the Latin, second meaning "to exist, to be" of "exisitere/exsistere," this also suggests the equivalence of "being" and "existence."
"Being" (the English noun) arise from to the verb "to be." with its predicate forming parts, 'is so-and-so" "are so-and-so." In normal English, to say that something exists is merely a variant form of what is otherwise expressed by the forms of the verb "to be." So, the claim that "existence" is not a predicate amounts to very much what could be said with "Being is not a predicate."
To say merely that something is, that it exists, is not yet to make any predicating statement or claim about it. As I recall, the point is rehearsed in Kant's writings.
Whatever exists or has being is a "reality" --leastwise for common sense and ordinary language.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
'Being' should not be mixed up with 'existence'. I am really novice in this question, but I think being (french être, German sein, Greek on) is of the domain of what makes something what it is, its essence. In the essence is not yet contained the existence for nearly all being.
If one wishes to associate philosophy (from Greek φιλοσοφία, philosophia, literally "love of wisdom") to a science, then it would be the science of a dialectic; as clearly demonstrated throughout the list of answers to Russo’s question.
Dear H.G. Callaway ,
I might be a question of how words are understood, but in my eyes being and existence are completely different. For ontology 'humans' "are", they can be described even if no single particular human would exist. Similarly any number has a being, even if it is not clear in which sense it "exists". The notion of 'greenness' has a being even if there might be only different green things in the world.
I think Aristotle and Plato had a different understanding of what ontology is the science of. The scholastic quarrel of universals opposed realists and nominalists. (Remember the final sentence of the film 'The name of the rose' Rosa pristina stat nomine, nomina nuda tenemus.)
There are also "essentialist" philosophy and "existentialist" philosophy and I will not be able to discuss the subject in every detail as a novice in philosophy.
I think in the anglo-saxon language usage, as I understand you, 'existence' is quite similar to 'being' and the notion of "being' then might be represented by another word. Anyhow it is also a problem of translation which is never 1-1 from one language to another.
Dear Michael T Takac ,
The idea of dialectic includes the idea of dialogue, this is one aspect. But the fact that a consensus can be found and 'truth' approached is as important. Pure dialects has to face Aristotle's critics of the Sophists who used dialectics to produce false truths.
Dear Thomas Krantz ,
When it comes to philosophy, there is no shortage of “false truths.”
Dear Michael T Takac and readers,
Please apologize a little incursion into 'mathematical model theory':
It makes me think in logics on non standard models of the axioms of Peano arithmetics. It is not contradictory with the usual axioms that the latter would be 'inconsistent'. This gives rise to non standard models of arithmetics but these are different from the usual, 'true' model of natural number arithmetics...
H.G. Callaway
"A symbolic or representational interpretation (the inner activitiy is directed towards external (!) objects) of neo-Platonic tenor (wich is als Chisholm's view on Brentano" (L. Albertazzi, Immanent Realism. An Introduction to Brentano, Dordrecht, Springer, 2006, p.82).
@ H.G. Callaway
Chisholm, and Quine,"reintroduced into the philosophical debate of the 1960s and 1970s" the intentionality theory.
Dear Thomas Krantz,
I’m a bit puzzled about your distinction between 'being' and 'existence'. You say:
“It might be a question of how words are understood, but in my eyes being and existence are completely different. For ontology 'humans' "are", they can be described even if no single particular human would exist. Similarly any number has a being, even if it is not clear in which sense it "exists". The notion of 'greenness' has a being even if there might be only different green things in the world. “
(1.) and (3.) seem to tell us that there are concepts, while (2.) seems to be about a property of an object. Following that standard conception of what denotes and what is denoted, (1.) and (3.) commit us to the existence of a certain kind of entities, namely concepts that exist independently of anything that satisfies that concept. I don’t see any further role for the notion of being in this case, because in order to have difference, one would have to explain how an entity a can have being without existence. Note again the difference in category. ‘a’ denotes the concept, not what falls under the concept.
(2.) seems to be about what is denoted. What you seem to say is that an entity that is denoted can have the property of being while it is possible that the entity does not exist. On a standard analysis of ‘existence’ in terms’ of ‘identity’ (an entity a exists iff there is at least one entity x, such that x has the same properties as a), your claim reads: there is an entity a, such that a has a property that x does not have, but if there is no x such that x is identical with a, then a does not exist. Which seems contradictory.
Maybe I don’t understand what you are after. I would be grateful if you could explain a little bit further how you understand the notion of ‘being’ and what theoretical role the notion is supposed to play. It seems to me that what you are after can be be analyzed in terms of ‘existence’.
Best,
Sven Beecken
Dear Sven Beecken ,
When you say 'concept' one thinks of a mental representation. That is not what I wanted to say. I tried to render the Aristotelian meaning of 'being' as it is described in what has been later called his metaphysics. Sorry If I would have given my proper view rather that the aristotelian view. I reread Aristotle through the eyes of a mathematician. Mathematicians are mostly suspected to adhere to platonism. I have been told Aristotle is a moderate realist.
It might also be subject to interpretation but I refer to the inital text. I suppose one can have a good view on it by
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-metaphysics/
Aristotle makes a primary distinction of 'being' into essence and accident.
The essence of a human is his humanity whereas accidental properties would be his location, his size, and other attributes.
Please don't make me speak more about it. Philosophers know this much better.
Dear Sven Beecken ,
One would speak about the 'existence of a human being' and one would speak (more rarely) about the 'being of the human existence'. It makes feel the difference between 'to exist' and 'to be'.
German language has a lot of proper nuances for related notions:
You have: das Sein = the being, das Seiende = that what is, die Existenz = the existence, das Existierende = the existing, das Wesen = the Essence, die Substanz = substance, etc.
Dear Thomas Krantz
I’m really not sure that I understand you. Might I suggest that we distinguish two different subjects: Aristotle as we know him from the history of philosophy and contemporary metaphysics. The relation between these two subjects is rather complicated. To be frank, I lack the confidence to engage with Aristotle’s arguments from a modern perspective, the frames of reference are too different. Just look at contemporary discussions of ‘essences’ . For example in a modal framework a la Kripke. These discussions are framed in terms unavailable to Aristotle (see for example Kripke’s Quantified Modality and Essentialism to get a gist of it). I’m not saying that there is no connection between contemporary and ancient metaphysics, I’m merely suggesting to keep the two subjects apart for the sake of discussion.
I was reading you from the modern perspective when I was trying to make sense of your notion of ‘being’ and in particular the relation to ‘existence’. Just from the analysis of your examples, it seems that the notion is either superfluous, because the problem can be framed in terms of existence or the notion is flawed since it results in contradiction.
If I may add, your first examples, das Sein, and das Seiende, are rather murky expression that – for me – places us a bit too close to Hegel and Heidegger to be comfortable.
Best.
Sven Beecken
Consolidated science and and research science are two different things.
No one wishes to argue with consolidated science, as having definite positive results. The main point about science is not what is known, but what is not known.
So when the topic is dark matter or quark confinment there comes into play
the ability to play with uncertainty. There is no more cerrtainty than the old alchemists, that Newton liked to emulate. The understanding of chemistry came far later than his time.
I wont say that metaphysics will solve anything, but it is there, an antecedent to future science. If you want to get somewhere, you must first dig around in the dark.
Dear Sven Beecken and Juan Weisz and readers,
Metaphysics questions some peoples convictions about a sort of material realism. This monism takes physical and mathematical principles for indicative, whereas
1) in mathematics the foundations are not settled and cannot be: This is one aspect of Gödels incompleteness theorem. There is a more modern axiomatics now for set theory, which will probably hold for the next 10000 years, but it is not definite.
2) as you said empirical physics stumbles on the problem of dark matter and incompatibility of different theories, finally on the problem of the origins and of causality.
3) fundamental physical questions are in my opinion insolvable: is space finite or infinite, is the world deterministic or not, is the world built out of smallest particles etc.
I cannot much talk about social science and antropology, medicine, psychology etc. I am not competent for it, but these are very fascinating and useful topics.
The example I gave before of an idealistic monism shows that there are alternatives to material monism.
I do not contest science has applications and so on, but science cannot solve definitely any problem like what is matter, what is soul, why are we self conscious, what should we believe and where do we go. Exact and natural science are not able to give valuable answers to these questions. And anyhow as was already said what we talk about everyday is mostly unscientific. Like, how do I feel when I hear Debussy's Claire de lune, or should we telephone for grand-fathers birthday or visit him and so on.
To say still a word about this mixing up of the expressions to be and to exist, I would say existence is one particular aspect a being can have, but being is also linked to what something is and not only to the fact that it is.
Thanks for reading this...
Firstly, there is epistemology, which is the philosophy of science par excellance.
Then we have the metaphysics of various levels of reality - how we describe them and make sense of them.@
Dear Elena N Draghici-Vasilescu ,
Do you make a difference between epistemology and philosophy of science?
What do you mean by "level of reality"?
Best,
TK
Thomas Krantz
I am just reading this text
https://www.academia.edu/3120633/Levels_of_Reality_and_Levels_of_Representation
Best
Antonio
Hello Thomas, Thank you for your reply. No, I do not differentiate between epistemology and the philosophy of science.
Levels of reality can mean many things. When I answered I had in mind possible academic approaches - for instance, there is a philosophy of history as well as one based on physics. biology, etc.
Dear Juan Weisz , Thomas Krantz and readers,
I sort of like the picture of metaphysics as kind of a precursor to science, but I agree with, what I take to be, the general assessment in this tread that one will find something like this most likely in the philosophy of science or something closely related (if it can be found, that is).
As I have said in a previous comment, contemporary metaphysics seems to some as rather remote from the sciences, albeit concerned with questions that, if taken seriously, are rather difficult to dismiss.
To make this a bit more concrete, consider, for example, Quine’s famous take on 'being’': “To be is to be the value of a bound variable.” For him, this basically means that all that there is are fundamental particles - and that’s it. The fact that people believe in chairs can be neatly explained by the mechanisms of conditioned response. I’m not saying that I agree with him, but he presents interesting and very influential arguments.
A famous one is the argument for ontological commitment from physics. It runs - very roughly! - like this: Take the best account about how the world works (physics) and translate all true statements of your favored theory of physics into the best logic (for Quine that means Quantified First Order Logic). Then read off the list of all and only the things that have to be there – the inventory of the world, as it is often put - from the model that satisfies all and only the translations - and you know “what there is”.
The force of the argument comes from the fact that the success of physics commits us to believe in the entities physics deals with. As he recognized, this line of reasoning has a caveat. If you believe in physics, so to speak, then you better believe in the things that are required to do physics. As it turns out, it’s kinda hard to do physics without numbers. So, you better believe in the existence of numbers too. Numbers are generally regarded as abstract objects. So, if the argument goes through -and needles to say, this is intensely debated - then the success of physics commits us to believe in the existence of abstract entities, which raises some interesting questions.
For example, many believe that questions about abstract entities fall, in principle, outside of the scope of the natural sciences. A major reason is that - roughly speaking - an abstract entity, or a “platonic” entity, has no place in space and time, which means it is not causally efficacious. And so, by definition, there is nothing that the natural sciences can say anything about. Yet we, as biological organisms, have somehow access to it. Assuming that the questions about how organisms work clearly concern the range of phenomena that the natural sciences are concerned with, we get the interesting situation that the part of philosophy that deals with this kind of issues is basically by definition not science. A conundrum that I’m not sure how to make sense off.
Best,
Sven Beecken
Annotation: I present more the lore of the actual arguments and discussions then referring to a particular publication. The literature is abundant, so, it is my hope that I’m forgiven for not giving references.
Antonio - I don’t think philosophy is a science but science is relevant for philosophy in at least two important ways, quite apart from giving us much of our subject matter in the first place. First, science can play a crucial role in our philosophizing itself. Second, science is a pretty good way of getting knowledge under a certain philosophy. Philosophy of science is a sub-field of philosophy concerned with the foundations, methods, and implications of science. The connections between science and philosophy is deep and influential. As an example between 'Physics and Metaphysics': The former deals with empirical matters – the nature of the universe – and is science. The latter deals with matters about science – the nature of causation – and is philosophy.
A scientific discipline must have hypotheses that we can disprove. Philosophy is such a huge open discipline. Philosophy is NOT a science, based on my narrow definition.
What is Science? What is Philosophy?
Aristotle (384–322 B.C.E.), considered "among the greatest philosophers of all time. Judged solely in terms of his philosophical influence,...
refers to the branches of learning as “sciences” (epistêmai), best regarded as organized bodies of learning completed for presentation rather than as ongoing records of empirical researches. Moreover, again in his terminology, natural sciences such as physics are but one branch of theoretical science, which comprises both empirical and non-empirical pursuits. He distinguishes theoretical science from more practically oriented studies, some of which concern human conduct and others of which focus on the productive crafts. Thus, the Aristotelian sciences divide into three: (i) theoretical, (ii) practical, and (iii) productive. The principles of division are straightforward: theoretical science seeks knowledge for its own sake; practical science concerns conduct and goodness in action, both individual and societal; and productive science aims at the creation of beautiful or useful objects".
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle/
Many thanks for your suggestions
Hi my dear professor
first of all I would like to appreciate you for askina this question.
i think philosophy is root of other room. For understanding, reaching, advancing all of sience we should find the philosophy. Antonio Russo Joseph Tham Zainab Nizar Jawad Joseph Tham
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Russo & readers,
Aristotle's approach seems to leave out the distinction between sciences and scholarly disciplines; and that is just the problem: the use of "science" to include any developed study or discipline. As you have it, " Thus, the Aristotelian sciences divide into three: (i) theoretical, (ii) practical, and (iii) productive."
But the clear modern usage of "science" distinguishes those disciplines which aim for comprehension of evidence, quantification, explanation and prediction. History, in contrast, though it is a highly developed discipline makes no viable claims for predictions. In the social sciences we find only weaker modes of quantification and prediction. This need not be viewed as a complaint. Instead the point is to understand the full range of disciplines in terms of the distinctive character of their typical results and aims.
Again, ethics, for example, can be highly developed and systematic. But, like philosophy more generally, it does not aim to be a science. The point of the division between science and the other disciplines is partly to see more fully their distinctive characters. Taking a point from Aristotle, we should not expect more precision from any given subject matter than it is capable of providing. Thus, it may be very misleading to claim that all scholarly disciplines are sciences.
Historically, and in the humanistic disciplines, the assimilation of all scholarly disciplines to "science" has had an very unfortunate, "totalizing," ideological effect.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
[Aristotle] refers to the branches of learning as “sciences” (epistêmai), best regarded as organized bodies of learning completed for presentation rather than as ongoing records of empirical researches. Moreover, again in his terminology, natural sciences such as physics are but one branch of theoretical science, which comprises both empirical and non-empirical pursuits. He distinguishes theoretical science from more practically oriented studies, some of which concern human conduct and others of which focus on the productive crafts.
Dear Callaway & readers,
It is good to study the great thinkers of past ages, in fact, it should be a requirement to study Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
However, the question, “Is Philosophy a Science?” is a good question! In our modern day, I’m inclined to say philosophy is the foundation to all sciences. That is, philosophy guides science where scientific discovery reforms philosophy; and there's no reason why this cycle should ever end, until the end of reason.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Leshchenko & readers,
Perhaps you will now see the point of my slight paraphrase?
Philosophy is the scholarly discipline that tries to formulate a deeper coherence of the wealth of experiences of both human/social existence and physical reality.
---End paraphrase
Though some sub-disciplines of philosophy are strongly oriented to the sciences, philosophy itself does not claim to be a science. There is a strong disciplinary element of intellectual history of "great thinkers," Aristotle included. But history is not a science and intellectual history in particular is not a science. Again, the sub-disciplines of metaphysics and epistemology, ethics, political philosophy, etc. are not sciences. Philosophy can be more or less scientific, and claims have been made (say by the positivists) for "scientific philosophy." But these claim are regularly contested and are certainly not self-certifying.
I beg to differ, with the modern thinker, with the authority of Aristotle on this point, as on several others. We needn't see a discipline as a "science" in order to find the better and worse of it.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
Philosophy is the science that tries to formulate a deeper coherence of the wealth of experiences of both human/social existence and physical reality.
Yes it is a science because philosophy is a systematic study of unanswerable questions which are still searching the answers endless searching is a philosophy
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Nrargatti & readers,
If philosophy is a "systematic study of unanswerable questions," and a matter of "endless searching," this would seem to be a rather frustrating endeavor to me. This is a notion of philosophy which makes the scientists throw up their hands and want to disregards philosophy in general. In accordance with your conception, it would seem that philosophy is no kind of science at all--having no results. Why would anyone bother with questions, stipulated as "unanswerable," --as contrasted with "unanswered"?
In any case, I would reject your narrow concept of philosophy. I wonder, e.g., if you are aware of, say, the extensive influence of Aristotle's Politics, on Western thought, down the centuries and millennia? This might count as a kind of resolution--which is not to say, of course, that everyone agrees. But it is a massive influence over thousands of years.
One might also count among the philosophical resolutions the general rejection of idealism which took place near the start of the 20th-century. This was part of a vast cultural change, and the philosophical criticisms of 19th-century idealisms played crucial roles.
For the most part, though, Philosophy makes very small adjustments to on-going intellectual and moral developments. Small but sometimes quite significant.
Contrast: "philosophy is a science, which ...." and "philosophy is a scholarly discipline, which ... ." I don't see any evidence in your note of the sense or significance of the contrast. But this is the very question at hand on this thread. We are not taking a vote here.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
Yes it is a science because philosophy is a systematic study of unanswerable questions which are still searching the answers endless searching is a philosophy.
Dear H.G. Callaway ,
If I am allowed to do this anachronistic comparison: I think Aristotle was to many respects more clever than the defenders of logical positivism.
I would cite Aristotle's hylomorphism as a witness.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hylomorphism
It gives a nice answer to the dualism body/soul which logical positivists would have declared meaningless.
Metaphysics role is to dissipate wrong or too restrictive scientific hypotheses (e.g. logical atomism) and to open minds for a true philosophical debate...
Dear Luay Abdulwahid Shihab ,
As soon as one says 'science' one should also say who is the one who 'knows'. Science is always the knowledge of someone in a certain situation for whom this knowledge makes sense.
Philosophy is base of all sciences with the help of philosophy only born all other branches of science without thinkers sages yogis saints we can't achieve anything.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Krantz & readers,
I quite agree in admiration of Aristotle's hylomorphism: "the psyche is the form of the body," more or less, in Aristotle's De Anima, i.e., the Psychology. Its a reasonable sort of view to keep in mind --in relation to mind-body debates and the prevalence of versions of materialism and physicalism and other alternatives. (By the way, I always found Leibniz fascinating, though more often wrong.)
I have studied the positivists, and written on related themes, so I can appreciate the kind of point you are making. That is part of the reason I'm insisting that philosophy can't be a science.
Study of historical metaphysical systems, belongs, of course, to professional competence in philosophy. But if philosophy is "Queen of the sciences," as was once often claimed, then its going to be more like a constitutional monarchy, I'm afraid, with the modern sciences and scholarly disciplines strenuously asserting their autonomy in evaluating the laws of nature and society.
Philosophy can, no doubt, point out a plausible direction of inquiry or post a warning against old errors. This is no scientific demonstration, though. "Philosophy," as you know, comes from the Greek, "phila-" (love, affiliation) + "sophia" = wisdom. Wisdom, I take it, can exceed what is scientifically provable or well confirmed at any given point in the growth of knowledge and science. But likewise, within science itself, reasonable and plausible hypotheses often exceed what is accepted as firm results in the various sciences. Philosophically, the sciences and scholarly disciplines become more interesting when they deal in diverse and conflicting proposals for "new science."
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote--
If I am allowed to do this anachronistic comparison: I think Aristotle was to many respects more clever than the defenders of logical positivism.
I would cite Aristotle's hylomorphism as a witness.
Sometimes in science you do not know the value or not of what you are doing,
to study the wing of a fly is as important as evaluating a new med?
But big things can emerge from seemingly small research topics.
Then you can step out of your specific activity and ask about its importance (or not)....Philosophize.
We need a specific criterion to distinguish a scientific discipline from a non-scientific discipline. For example, how many of you would agree that "astrology" is a science. If you do not agree, then why?
Without a specific criterion, ANYTHING can be a science.
If you have well organized plan or mind, you are probably doing science.
Rationally, not emotionally, writting down notes about what you see.
Without feeding in preconceptions.
Knowing something about statistics and measurement helps.
Even the investigator of the paranormal will be doing science if you go about it orderly and systematically.
Juan Weisz So in your opinion, astrology is a science? Astrologers do a LOT of research. They are rational and not emotional. They would fulfill all the criteria that you have mentioned. How do we test a scientific discipline? By assessing the accuracy and validity of the predictions in the scientific discipline.
Joseph
If what you say is true, then its a science.
But you have to interpret statistics very well to distinguish a true result.
Because later, when results are public, there is a lot of scrutiny.
In a field like that, you have to be better than most.
For some astrology is just fun, not serious buisness.
They will ask things like where is cause and effect, there has to be some logic
for convincement, or closure. (In the quantum theory there is little logic)
So all in all it is quite hard to define science.
Science is a human endeavor to use natural laws to be useful toward human survival. Philosophy is a science that seeks to unite various disciplines (branches) into a cohesive whole. I add that the study of life survival and societal growth and survival should be included. Therefore, the principles of life and successful (growing) societies are principles the physical sciences should use to construct physical laws,
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Hodge, Weisz & readers,
Obviously we do need some definition of terms here. I would say, though that counting astrology as a science is plausibly a reductio ad absurdum of such a wide conception of science.
We won't get a fair and adequate conception of science without attention to its methods and key ideas including explanation, theory, quantification, confirmation, prediction, etc. One of my arguments to distinguish sciences from scholarly disciplines turns on the example of history--a well developed, often systematic discipline, but one which does not plausibly claim to make predictions.
Only lacking an understanding of the roles of prediction in the sciences would anyone be inclined to regard history as a science. So, there is at least this one scholarly discipline which is not a science.
While I can imagine a scientific study of the social phenomenon of astrology, e.g., this would not imply that the phenomenon under study is itself a science. There might be a sociology, say, of astrology or of philosophy, but this is not the same as holding that astrology or philosophy are themselves sciences.
H.G. Callaway
Dear H.G. Callaway ,
I think it depends on your beliefs if you attribute to a certain wisdom the ability to predict. In ancient times priests could read future out of different observations (of stars etc. ). Today's scientists are often astonished about success of chinese medicine which does not always correspond to our western standards of scientificity.
I am not sure philosophy could respond to all science norms. For instance philosophy is not empirical, it is more or less rational (it even questions rationality by means of reason). What does philosophy stand for? philosophy of mind, of the cosmos, of art, of history, and so on.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Krantz & readers,
Philosophy, historically, has been more or less empirical as it has embraced or rejected the progress of the development of empirical science and its methods. Philosophical "empiricism" involves variations on the theme that "all knowledge derives from or depends on sense-experience, observation, experimentation, etc." (There is a comparatively subtle difference between "derives from" and "depends upon" which may be of further interest to this thread.)
Opposed to this has always been the tendency to find sources of knowledge within the mind itself, as in "innate ideas," "intuition," "the a priori," rational consensus, etc. The general term for this variety of epistemology is "rationalism." Epistemology, again is a sub-discipline of philosophy --usually including philosophy of science, by the way. In general terms, I would suggest here that forms of rationalism have usually been found more plausible in more homogeneous societies.
Whatever the success of traditional practices, such as Chinese medicine, I see no conflict with empiricism in that. Based on your description one would say it is not scientific. In spite of that it may be a substantial scholarly discipline. Practices of an art or skill may develop on the basis of (real or apparent) success of the practices themselves without guidance of theoretical insight or comprehension--which may later be supplied. Such was the case, apparently, in the ancient development of geometry out of the regular, developed practices of land survey in ancient Egypt.
I distinguish scientific prediction, as e.g., when Einstein predicted the quantitative displacement of the observed positions of stars in the vicinity of the sun during a total eclipse (on the basis of GR in contrast to Newtonian gravity), on the one hand from prognostication or punditry on the other. You will notice, perhaps, that the newspapers are often full of "pundits" telling us what is about to happen in political terms. There is better and worse to this practice. (As with the wisdom on offer in philosophy.)
Some of this punditry may draw on the social sciences, including economics. (There is currently a spate of predictions of "the next recession" in the financial media.) Like the prognostications of the ancient priests or soothsayers of the Romans or Greeks, e.g., modern pundits may be thoroughly familiar with the details proceeding momentous decisions and make guesses --better or worse guesses. But all such prognostication is best viewed as sharing the character of (plausible or implausible) hypothesis. The wisdom of the philosopher's "sophia," also shares the character of hypothesis--though in contrast with quantified scientific prediction.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
I think it depends on your beliefs if you attribute to a certain wisdom the ability to predict. In ancient times priest could read future out of different observations (of stars etc. ). Today's scientists are often astonished about success of Chinese medicine which does not always correspond to our western standards of scientificity.
H.G. Callaway
That science observes/experiments and converts data to prediction seems reasonable.
Astrology was originally just such a procedure. The priests (magi) recorded events then related them to the position of planets as a timekeeping device. The method relating time to ruler's lives was flaky as later sometimes wanted to erase the memory of prior rulers. Using the planets as a clock/calendar is better than one might expect. Of course, the continuation of this study into modern times has been allowed to be lost to false data (inroads of superstition and mysticism).
Read the events around Jesus birth and the Magi (Zoroastrians) . The planetary lineup noted occurs abut every 1500-1600 years, the "going before" refers to the retrograde motion (at the time the model was each planet had its own physics - so time reversal - modern term- was allowed as an observation). The confluence moved westward each cycle. Where else were the magi to find a future king other than in the town were Hebrew king originate. They were well aware of Herod's goals. So, they brought lots of money (the incense was rare in Egypt and worth more than the heavy gold). 1600 years from Jesus and westward brings us to Galileo or Newton. Personally, I think Newton. From Newton. So, westward and 1500 brings us to today (roughly) and in the US. A major change in paradigm is imminent.
Dear John Hodge, I would say particle physics is a sort of other extreme to astrology: Whereas in astrology a link was established between what happens in heaven and what happens on earth, in QM there is a link established between what happens in mathematics and what happens on earth. Both links can experimentally neither be disproved nor proved completely. I do not disagree that physics works fine: CM is replaced by QM then by QFT then by QCD etc. The predictive power of models gets better and better. Ptolemeus' theory of epicycles is replaced by newtonian gravitation then by Einstein's GR, then by M-theory, etc.
Ancient wisdom, similarly, is overtaken and reinterpreted according to the time to which this wisdom shall talk. Mostly it gives "guidelines" for what a subject should believe in all situations of life. Note that the determinism of astrology has not yet been overcome in physics...
Particle physics is indeed the least developed branch of physics, probably the hardest. For example the standard model is more about particle clasification
than anything else.
M or string theory have little concrete to show, they reflect the madness of some
mathematically inclined physicists.
Thomas Krantz
I apologize, perhaps I was unclear. Original astrology was not proposing a link between heaven (with an exception) , but that the Magi used the planets as a clock/calendar. The concept of a close link came with Christianity.
THE exception: The Magi and the Greeks thought that the heavens (beyond the planets) ejected the matter that were not heavenly and unchanging to the crystal spheres of the planets. Each crystal sphere has their own physics (thus explaining the backward flow of time in most of them (not Sum and moon). As each piece of matter became unqualified for a given sphere, it was rejected to a lower sphere. Eventually the true garbage of the universe was reject until it arrived at the center of the universe - Earth, the garbage pile of the universe. The early Christians adopted this view - we see it today as mankind's original sin and the view what is successful on the garbage pile is not heavenly. Therefore, one must punish oneself and not succeed on Earth in order to advance at least to the nest higher crystal/celestial plane.
Dear John Hodge ,
I must admit that I'm not an expert of astrology but I think the situation is more complex according to the culture one refers to.
The original sin is biblical and anterior to Christianism. No one forbids you to succeed, and self-punishment is in the best case a means to abandon false dependencies not an objective in itself. Not having success on earth is not a necessary condition for having a good place in heaven. This is only a partial view.
One should read it as it is written: as a message of hope. Anyhow what is considered true success is to become saint.
PS I should mention that the Magi believed may be in astrology, but they kneeled before the child and recognized by that the new order.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Weisz & readers,
Your comment below seems misleading. There is much more to the Standard Model than particle classification. It also involves the application varieties of quantum field theory (QFT) to the fundamental forces covered, and this was no small accomplishment. A further point is that it predicted the Higgs field and the Higgs particle --recently discovered at CERN.
The attempt to extend the Standard Model to include gravitation has not met with the same sort of success, but it remains, along with GR, the (comparatively) low-energy paradigm --constraining and structuring the attempts to go further. Proposed new physics has to match the low-energy predictions of the Standard Model and not contradict what has been found by means of QED, QCD, etc.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
Particle physics is indeed the least developed branch of physics, probably the hardest. For example the standard model is more about particle classification than anything else.
To me, an established/proven science theory is a philosophy.
Mathematical idealism based modern theoretical physicists disparage philosophy at every turn. For them, “Philosophy is to natural science, what Ornithology is to the birds!” . But theoretical natural science (physics in particular) has now reached the stage of bankruptcy! Please see the latest discussion in the following forum and the article linked below : Article Free Fall in Gravitational Theory
http://www.e-journal.org.uk/shape/papers/Special%2064.pdf
Please Note: The following is a radical (and probably unpopular) view of philosophy pursued by this author and posted here for any interested person:
Philosophy IS “the science of all sciences” (as the top recommended comment says); but in my view, only when it reaches the level of dialectical mode of thought. Philosophy and mathematics are thought objects based on abstraction; but mathematics as a tool of epistemology is very limited in scope and potentials; the reason why it has led modern theoretical physics to bankruptcy!
Hegel divided the science of thought into two broad categories, 1) “the view of understanding” or crudely speaking causality and 2) “the view of reason” or popularly called dialectics. Both of these two modes of thoughts arose with the early Greeks in Europe and elsewhere in the world, at about the same time in different forms. But the forms of the early Greeks, with major developments along the way came down as the dominant ones in history.
Causality is a legacy of the evolutionary process of history and developed (more or less) in a natural way, but took its present form of formal logic with Aristotle’s principle, “Unity, Opposition and the Excluded Middle”. Dialectics can be traced back to the brilliant intuition of Heraclitus that “everything is in a flux of change due to inner conflict”. The idea of change due to inner contradiction (but not as the “effect of a cause” as causality says) posited the immortal germ of dialectics. Hegel later formalized it in the principle: the contradiction of the “Unity of the Opposite”. [Note: I can refer anybody interested to have a look at my rendition of the difference in these two modes of thought in the attached article at the bottom, which is a chapter of my booklet, “The dialectical Universe” .
Philosophy (in the conventional meaning of the term) came to an end with Hegel's dialectics. Because, if the aim of all philosophies was to know the ultimate and the final truth of the world, Hegel's dialectics (in spite of his “Absolute Idea”) showed that there is no such final truth to be "discovered"! Humanity is condemned to deal only with progressively better relative truths in a historical process of infinite qualitative leaps ; as objective reality itself in made up of infinite qualitative leaps, generated by quantitative changes and vice versa. There is no (giant) leap of "creation" like "Big Bang " - a delusion of official physics, precisely because objective reality and Nature consists entirely of infinite discrete leaps!:
Article Ambartsumian, Arp and the Breeding Galaxies*
Dialectics (or what remains of old philosophy) as "the science of all sciences" can now only be a leading integral part of the positive sciences; systematically summarizing the essence of old positive knowledge and those of the progressively gained new ones on the various aspects of objective reality. The quantum phenomenon is one such new major and revolutionary aspect of objective reality that dialectics can fully account for:
Article The Philosophy of Space-Time: Whence Cometh "Matter" and "Motion"?
Dear Abdul Malek ,
To comment just your view on mathematics: Mathematics has not the ambition to substitute to epistemology (nor to physics). Sometimes it can significantly contribute though: Gödel's completeness and incompleteness theorems, Results of syntax and semantics in logics, information theory, etc. The scope is limited to mathematics that's true. We often require purity of the domain. In applied science a multidisciplinary approach can be more useful. Now it is a philosophical question if science should be pure or multidisciplinary.
Anyhow I think mathematical realism, which short-cuts the role of philosophy of physics, is to be rejected. Mathematical platonism is preferable though it only speaks about entities in an "ideal" world. In nature there are no lines, no circles, no manifolds, no actual infinite, etc. Then physics can use mathematical models and it has to explain how these models can be brought in accordance with experimental results.
H.G. All knowing philosopher?
As a Physicist who has actually had couses on particle physics, that is still
my opinion. The more recent Higgs stuff is more uncertain than touted in popular press.
Particle physics is not coming to its end anytime soon.
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Weisz & readers,
I certainly agree "that particle physics is not coming to an end any time soon." For the most part, needed evidence at very high energies and very small scales is simply inaccessible.
I chiefly follow the physicists involved in creation of the Standard Model. In a way, this is a matter of getting down to basics comparatively and in contrast to more recent, more speculative developments.
The Standard Model and GR are the two pillars of the various attempts to go further. When my related view has been challenged, it often turns out that the specific challenges come down to people disputing Weinberg. In philosophy of physics, I aim not to second-guess what is accepted or better established--except where there may be some more overt conflicts involved.
I don't do physics; but my related readings are very wide, and I think that any enlightening philosophical approach to what is going on in contemporary science should be welcomed. Its a formative force of contemporary thought and society.
H.G. Callaway
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Boutekouk & readers,
As the ancient Greeks had it, Philosophy begins in wonder:
Philosophy begins in Wonder.
SOCRATES: I see, my dear Theaetetus, that Theodorus had a true insight into your nature when he said that you were aphilosopher; for wonder is the feeling of aphilosopher, and philosophy begins in wonder. (Plato, Theaetetus 155c-d, tr. Jowett; "wonder" in Aristotle.)
H.G. Callaway
HG
Yes, you do know more that an average philosopher about this, so I wont discourage you.
I consider Weinberg as actually one of the more balanced people around in the field. Whom I most criticize is string theorists, or M theory theorists, who I consider
streched too far in almost purely math issues.(all too speculative)Even twistor theory is still in pathetic shape.
Regards, Juan
Thomas Krantz
Thanks for your interest in my comment and your thoughtful reflections on mathematics. I must say from the start that I am not a formally trained mathematician. You probably could guess it. I would not generally speak against my own profession! But I did read some very profound mathematicians like Reuben Hersh (What Is Mathematics, Really? or Mathematical Experience etc.) whose bold critique of official mathematics has resonance with my own views. As I am looking at mathematics from a philosophical point of view, my interest lies in the essence and not the substance of mathematics, on which my poverty is even more. It would be very difficult to address the significant issues you raised in your response in a short comment like this; I can only give an overview of my position and refer to my published works for more details.
My criticism of mathematics arises from my critique of the theories of modern physics; as physicists practically have more or less taken over mathematics; since the advent of the quantum phenomena by the turn of the 20th century. In my view, mathematics has become a powerful alienation for natural science – a product of man which has got out of his control and like a Frankenstein Monster has come back to control and haunt its creator! It is even more! Mathematics has become the a priori determinant of the universe (“Our Mathematical Universe”) according to the Harvard physicist Max Tegmark.
Democritus’ atom, matter in eternal motion and materialism - the notions that were once the greatest strength and the proud tradition of natural science, has now given way to the slogan, “Matter is a Myth!” I could bring many more examples of this sorry state of affairs regarding science and mathematics. Mathematics, which was once the useful handmaiden of natural science has now been promoted to the role of the queen, to rule the kingdom; which she is ill equipped to do!
In its applied form mathematics was extremely useful for natural science. In fact mathematics found its golden age during the scientific revolution in Europe and developed in a symbiotic relation with classical physics. But in its idealist form, mathematics (geometry in particular – the basis for GR) is a grand form of tautology that helps “consistent” and subjectively pleasing conclusions, but only those conclusions that are implicitly contained in the axiom, premise or presupposition that you started with! The whole mechanical deduction or procedure does not add any additional content or new knowledge, whatsoever!
But Albert Einstein is to blame for dragging both physics and mathematics to the realm of Platonic idealism. Faced with the breakdown of revered causality with the recognition the quantum uncertainty, Einstein did in physics, what Kant earlier did in philosophy; both declared objective reality as unknowable thing-in-itself. The only way to deal with this unknowable and unruly objective reality; they asserted, is to impose on it their subjective categories (logical for Kant, mathematical for Einstein) cooked-up in their thought. Physics now, like philosophy has become fertile ground for mysticism, medieval type scholasticism and a vehicle for endless debates and antinomies!
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Liu & readers,
There is "philosophy" as a scholarly discipline; and within it one finds any number of distinct, contrasting and even conflicting philosophies. Philosophers engage in rational debate and attempt to evaluate the issues which divide them. In doing so, they may be more or less oriented to and informed by the results of the natural and social sciences--and this may suggest directions, hypotheses, for exploration. But in isolation from the pre-existing results and methods of the sciences, philosophy has little to go on for purposes of indicating "the correct way of science thinking." The scientists do this themselves. When they differ, then this often parallels philosophical differences: as in the historical conflicts between realism and idealism.
No doubt, philosophers have always had some significant interest in knowledge generally (saying what is to count as knowledge, e.g.); and they are interested in how the sciences might best develop. But they have no independent access to the subject-matter of the sciences. Scientists are usually and typically specialists in their own fields, and they usually and typically know better how to evaluate developments in their fields. So, it may be misleading to think of philosophy as laying down "the foundation" of the sciences and their development. At the best, philosophers may sometimes be better suited to attain to an overview. But the methods of the sciences (for instance their experimental methods) develop with their content and results. These developments cannot be foreseen (or predicted in detail) by philosophy --or by anyone else.
In spite of generalities, including commitment to rational evaluation, the "correct way[s]" of scientific thinking largely develop in the sciences themselves; and the details can't be known ahead of time.
"The owl of Minerva flies at night," as the point is sometimes put.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
Philosophy is the correct way of science thinking. Philosophy laid the foundation for science developing.
Dear Abdul Malek,
I am convinced about the far reaching philosophical illiteracy of scientists in general. But a philosopher should take Democrites atom only as a hypothesis. One advantage of the methodological agnosticism of mathematics (the criteria for mathematical success are beauty and fertility more than physical truth or physical adeptedness, they may coincide though) is that all logical possibilities are considered.
You wrote: "Physics now, like philosophy has become fertile ground for mysticism, medieval type scholasticism and a vehicle for endless debates and antinomies!"
Sadly the medieval discussions are often forgotten, they are very interesting, much more than contemporary scientific or mathematical mono-culture.
I tend to agree that physics should be left for physicists, but, like any community, physicists can get themselves in a tangle. The philosophy of physics has been useful in analysing the assumptions behind different interpretations of quantum physics for example. The standard model could also do with more philosophical scrutiny, to discuss whether any theory of fundamental particles need look so ad hoc. Areas such as the relevance of information theory to physics as the unification of cosmology with quantum physics should receive analysis from philosophers as well as development of explanatory theories by physicists. (For example can we define a fundamental particle by an equivalence class of sequences of bits?) I have to say that I do find some interpretations of physics hard to defend: both the Copenhagen and many worlds interpretations of quantum mechanics are flawed, the former for lacking completeness with regards to elements of reality, and the latter for postulating a model that could not be tested by experiment.
Dear Andrew Powell and readers,
I am not very familiar with interpretations of QP, but I think they very often presuppose independency of the observer. There has been an attempt by Carlo Rovelli (relational quantum mechanics) to make it observer dependent, but then one has to explain why we are able to agree on reality.
Experts of philosophy of physics could tell us certainly more, also about other sorts of exegesis of QM?
Philadelphia, PA
Dear Powell & readers,
You have a fair listing of interesting topics for discussion in the philosophy of physics. I am not sure that this is the appropriate forum to discuss them. But many of your questions do show up in my writings.
I wonder in particular why it is that you view the Standard Model's theory of elementary particles as "ad hoc."
For comparison, would you also view the periodic table of the elements as "ad hoc." If not, what is the relevant difference? I suspect that some readers of this thread may find your critical perspective a bit difficult to follow.
H.G. Callaway
---you wrote---
I tend to agree that physics should be left for physicists, but, like any community, physicists can get themselves in a tangle. The philosophy of physics has been useful in analysing the assumptions behind different interpretations of quantum physics for example. The standard model could also do with more philosophical scrutiny, to discuss whether any theory of fundamental particles need look so ad hoc.
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