Tammuz

When looking at the history of philosophy, it seems to me that subjects that were initially in the domain of philosophy are now in the domain of science, and that it has been going on in that direction. People like Democritus and Thales thought about the nature of the world, what it was ultimately composed of, and how it started. Some ancient philosophers also put forth theories on the origins of life.

Today however, the mentioned subjects are scientific subjects, and not philosophical ones. And science has recently slowly been gaining ground in the subject of the mind, which is a very old philosophical question.

I think that this trend will continue, though I don't know how far it will go. So in the future we might perhaps have science answering if free will or pre-destination is true, which the best way of organizing a state is, how to achieve as much happiness as possible, if your red is my red, etc etc.

What do you think?

Irascible Doughnut

If the ancient Greeks had already had our scientific knowledge, there might never have been a real distinction between the two in the first place. And now philosophy and science (and maybe one day religion, too) are finally kind of merging into scilosophy A more holistic approach ...

Antiplastic

Dennett said that philosophy is "what you do when you don't know which questions to ask". I think that's a good starting point. It's a little anachronistic to criticise the presocratics for failing to do science before science was invented -- before science, absolutely no one knew what questions to ask, or how to go about answering them. The Ionian naturalists came closer than most, and in the process helped give birth to what we know today as science. There's no room in the imagery of midwifery for one thing "conquering" another.

Another way of putting it is that, to the extent that they were asking scientific questions about cosmogony or the composition of matter, they were philosophers who were doing science, just as when Thales made breakfast he was a philosopher who happened to be "doing cooking" at the moment.

Yet another way of putting it is to doubt that philosophy has any subject matter, in the sense that it has a domain of knowledge the way organic chemistry or the philology of Saga-era Iceland have domains for their deliverances to be "about". Philosophy is not an area of knowledge as much as it is an activity of analysis whose results are techniques. One could as well worry that some day auto mechanics might be replaced by metallurgists.

I am practically certain that science will inform these areas, and I am just as certain that no science will ever answer any of these questions, because normative claims are noncognitive. You can call this a philosophical "result" if you like.

kennethamy

Science is talk about the world. But philosophy (Gilbert Ryle said) is talk about talk. Scientist find out, and talk about the causes of events.
Philosophers talk about the concept of cause, and the concept of event, and analyze those concepts (and, of course, many others).

Until scientists decide to become philosophers, and decide to discuss and analyze the concepts of causation and events, (and many other concepts like knowledge, and thought, and morality, etc.) and I suppose that most scientists are too busy discovering causes to bother about analyzing the concept of causation even if they were inclined to do so, I imagine that philosophy will be safe. And even if scientists did get interested (as some are) they would still have to compete with the professionals. And from my observations, the scientists are not so hot at philosophy. So that philosophers needn't worry about unemployment.

adren@line

philosophy covers what science cannot, or extends on what science can cover through logical means.

kennethamy

Have you any examples, so I can tell what you mean? Right now, I can't. How is it determined what science cannot cover? And why do you say that philosophy covers what science covers through logical means? Does that imply there are things that science does not cover through logical means? In other word, what are you saying?

Iggy

Philosophy is always ahead of science and constantly utilized to qualify what is worthy science. Philosophy asks questions ie what is? ontology; speculates and proffer opinions on " how do we know what is", epistemology; answers our queries to questions like "what is it that this thing we know is worth, and how do we acquire and utilize it ", axiology and praxiology respectively.

Science intervenes in the philosophic realm in the personage of the theoretical physicists who are philosophers themselves and who use the tools of mathematics as part of their repertoire of speculative and confirming tools. Below them are the practical scientists, ie engineers and technologists who convert what is known to utilitarian objects, (of course under the constant eye of the philosophers or a guiding philosophy that validates the utility and worth of the task they perform). This is the way I see it.

kennethamy

I haven't really noticed many scientists who, as they work, look over their shoulders to see whether the philosophers who monitor them approve. One obvious example is quantum theory. Another is relativity theory.

Iggy

I never said the philosopher has to approves. It is clear that science is paradigmatic. The degree to which anomalous results are ignored when the rules fail and when the paradigm is abandoned for a more encompassing theory is a philosophic concern and one to which the science has to contend with if science is to be deemed meaningful. No real philosopher monitors but what is to be made meaningful for us humans is the domain where philosophy and the philosopher intervenes.

The dichotomous relationship between quantum mechanics and relativity and any mediating effect of string theory or other theory of everything to the problem is not devoid of philosophic input. At the heart of it all is the pursuit of simplicity, a literal acceptance of Occams razor which has no scientific basis but is for and intents and purpose the guiding philosophic rule.

adren@line

something that philosophy would cover: the origin and cause of order.

something that science covers: deducing how the order is structured, to a degree.

Logic is indeed present in science, but it is logic and empirical data.

Philosophy is simply logic that is based on observations in nature and perhaps tied to current scientific understandings.