Art or Science?

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StayCurious
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Art or Science?

Post by StayCurious »

Should philosophy be considered an art or a science? I was recently listening to an Alan Watts lecture were he defined science simply as "accurate description" which requires rigorous precision and calculable elimination of variables, which is not possible in philosophy the way it is in Chemistry and Mathematics, using contamination-proof rooms and limited variables.

Is the mind too variable for all things to be considered, or are we fundamentally driven by basic needs and desires which can be simply calculated?
Alias
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Alias »

Speculative fiction
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Eduk
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Eduk »

Philosophy, used normatively, is everything left from philosophy, as a whole, when you remove everything useful.
The scientific method, for example, is a philosophy. It's just not normally thought of in that way.
Unknown means unknown.
Karpel Tunnel
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Karpel Tunnel »

What Eduk said and...
It is not science or an art but can involve facets of both. Though really, so do science and art.
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Count Lucanor
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Count Lucanor »

StayCurious wrote: February 20th, 2018, 5:34 pm Should philosophy be considered an art or a science? I was recently listening to an Alan Watts lecture were he defined science simply as "accurate description" which requires rigorous precision and calculable elimination of variables, which is not possible in philosophy the way it is in Chemistry and Mathematics, using contamination-proof rooms and limited variables.

Is the mind too variable for all things to be considered, or are we fundamentally driven by basic needs and desires which can be simply calculated?
I don't understand why the dichotomy art-science. Shouldn't it be science-pseudoscience? Or science-philosophy? One should make the difference between methods and the object of study. Usually each method corresponds to its object of study, so you don't use a chemistry lab to study the ecological pressures faced by the monarch butterflies.
The wise are instructed by reason, average minds by experience, the stupid by necessity and the brute by instinct.
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
Jan Sand
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Jan Sand »

As an artist who has had a good deal of science in my education and general life interest I consider the two so closely aligned that I have accepted that they are pretty much the same thing. The human mind is the functioning dynamic of the brain and the brain functions to create what we know of the exterior from the clues fed to it from its sensor system which is a series of continuous impulses. It has to be pretty good at guessing or none of us would survive but nevertheless we all make mistakes, some of which are called optical illusions. But some of these mistakes are extremely useful. Such as looking at a photo or a painting and mistaking it for reality. Leonardo DaVinci was obviously both a scientist and an artist because they are obviously not that different. Science always makes artistic guesses as to the reality of observations and when more observations arrive undermining previous guesses, new artistic guesses advance science because the new guesses have to be modified. Art works the same way in abstracting from nature and representing thought in creative models as does theoretical mathematics.They all work to integrate theoretical abstracts of observation into useful and interesting patterns.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Sy Borg »

Alias wrote: February 20th, 2018, 8:49 pm Speculative fiction
In many ways, yes, which is perhaps why it is so powerful. Asimov, for instance, was a deep thinker with a terrific philosophical eye and vision. It's been shown time and again that speculative fiction is an essential ingredient for progress. Whether an idea occurs in head of a scientist, philosopher or artist is to some extent moot, as long as it finds its way through one way or another to those who can use it.

Most people think about life as would a child think about chess - without considering any possible future moves. Most times what is referred to as "practical" or "sensible" usually involves mindless incident handling that fails to consider underlying problems, and also ignores the "non useful" small aspects of life that can bring, not only fascination, but useful transferable knowledge.
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jerlands
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by jerlands »

StayCurious wrote: February 20th, 2018, 5:34 pm Should philosophy be considered an art or a science? I was recently listening to an Alan Watts lecture were he defined science simply as "accurate description" which requires rigorous precision and calculable elimination of variables, which is not possible in philosophy the way it is in Chemistry and Mathematics, using contamination-proof rooms and limited variables.

Is the mind too variable for all things to be considered, or are we fundamentally driven by basic needs and desires which can be simply calculated?
All search for knowledge and its expression lies under the umbrella of philosophy.. everything. Science and Art however have had close relationships since their conception.
"It ain't what you don't know that gets you into trouble. It's what you know for sure that just ain't so." - Mark Twain
Alias
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Alias »

Greta wrote: February 25th, 2018, 10:18 pm [Speculative fiction]
In many ways, yes, which is perhaps why it is so powerful. Asimov, for instance, was a deep thinker with a terrific philosophical eye and vision. It's been shown time and again that speculative fiction is an essential ingredient for progress. Whether an idea occurs in head of a scientist, philosopher or artist is to some extent moot, as long as it finds its way through one way or another to those who can use it.
Philosophers make analytical sense of, see a coherent pattern in, the human-centered world as they see it. The analysis is as much a product of time and place and culture as the philosopher who makes it - but he doesn't seem to know that; all philosophers seem to imagine themselves universal and eternal. In attempting to write in absolute, comprehensive terms, they make their work inaccessible to the majority of potential readers.
SF writers understand that they and their ideas are conditional, and couch those in terms that most of their contemporaries can not only understand, but enjoy and internalize. They distill the essence of philosophical thought and make it potable.
Eduk
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Eduk »

I thought a core component of Socrates was to challenge one's own beliefs.
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Jan Sand
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Jan Sand »

Most humans have a very difficult time seeing that other forms of life can have views very different from the anthropocentric views. Humans are on a very strong path to destroy much of life on this planet and there is amazingly little resistance to this. See https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/02/26 ... -universe/ Even Asimov foresaw the development of human expansion into the galaxy as a merely larger version of the growth of the various Earth nations expansion across the planet. It seem most unlikely that alien life forms in other solar systems would be anything like humans with human ambitions to dominate and human stupidities. One cannot know whether they would be better or worse but it is most likely they would be very different.
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Sy Borg
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Sy Borg »

Alias wrote: February 26th, 2018, 2:51 pm
Greta wrote: February 25th, 2018, 10:18 pm[Speculative fiction]
In many ways, yes, which is perhaps why it is so powerful. Asimov, for instance, was a deep thinker with a terrific philosophical eye and vision. It's been shown time and again that speculative fiction is an essential ingredient for progress. Whether an idea occurs in head of a scientist, philosopher or artist is to some extent moot, as long as it finds its way through one way or another to those who can use it.
Philosophers make analytical sense of, see a coherent pattern in, the human-centered world as they see it. The analysis is as much a product of time and place and culture as the philosopher who makes it - but he doesn't seem to know that; all philosophers seem to imagine themselves universal and eternal. In attempting to write in absolute, comprehensive terms, they make their work inaccessible to the majority of potential readers.
SF writers understand that they and their ideas are conditional, and couch those in terms that most of their contemporaries can not only understand, but enjoy and internalize. They distill the essence of philosophical thought and make it potable.
Yes, the philosophers of antiquity tended to espouse philosophies than could reasonably be described as "antique". Like many antiques, the ideas could be beautiful in form but less functional than what came after.

Authors are more free than philosophers who are more free than scientists. In industry and society these fields are separated. However, there is no logical reason for a thinker to be restricted to any of these fields, or even categorise their thoughts in that way. If not too conditioned, we will think about the nature of reality, or parts of it, and simply use the available tools. I'm not going to best understand art with math or make sense of a data set with philosophy.
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Atreyu
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Atreyu »

StayCurious wrote: February 20th, 2018, 5:34 pm Should philosophy be considered an art or a science? I was recently listening to an Alan Watts lecture were he defined science simply as "accurate description" which requires rigorous precision and calculable elimination of variables, which is not possible in philosophy the way it is in Chemistry and Mathematics, using contamination-proof rooms and limited variables.

Is the mind too variable for all things to be considered, or are we fundamentally driven by basic needs and desires which can be simply calculated?
Philosophy is more art than science. It's definitely not science, because it doesn't deal with theories, only reasonable ideas. It's not exact and precise enough to be science.

However, it's not properly art either. Art is doing, not thinking...
Alias
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Alias »

"Art" covers quite a range of endeavours. Visual arts, tactile arts, verbal, cinematic, musical, culinary, choreographic... and where do you put fashion design, architecture and dermal embellishment?
Those who can induce you to believe absurdities can induce you to commit atrocities. - Voltaire
Jan Sand
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Re: Art or Science?

Post by Jan Sand »

Fashion design puts profit into the textile industry and tattoo is put to embellish the skin with a strange poetry of intent. People cannot grow feathers like peacocks nor that menacing horn on the nose of a rhinoceros so they compensate with the delights of total body embellishments as the resourceful Japanese have displayed or the unimaginative standards of a heart or anchor.
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