Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Use this forum to discuss the philosophy of science. Philosophy of science deals with the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science.
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George1949
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by George1949 »

Here is the most recognized definition of Science. If you do not accept this definition, you are in the minority and there is no reason for us to debate it. It really isn’t a debatable topic.

“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.”

Nothing in Philosophy can be put into testable explanations and predictions about anything, especially not the universe.

“Contemporary science is typically subdivided into the natural sciences, which study the material universe; the social sciences, which study people and societies; and the formal sciences, which study logic and mathematics. The formal sciences are often excluded as they do not depend on empirical observations. Disciplines which use science, like engineering and medicine, may also be considered to be applied sciences.”

“From classical antiquity through the 19th century, science as a type of knowledge was more closely linked to philosophy than it is now, and in the Western world the term "natural philosophy" once encompassed fields of study that are today associated with science, such as astronomy, medicine, and physics.”

However, during the Islamic Golden Age foundations for the scientific method were laid by Ibn al-Haytham in his Book of Optics. While the classification of the material world by the ancient Indians and Greeks into air, earth, fire and water was more philosophical, medieval Middle Easterns used practical and experimental observation to classify materials.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, scientists increasingly sought to formulate knowledge in terms of physical laws. Over the course of the 19th century, the word "science" became increasingly associated with the scientific method itself as a disciplined way to study the natural world. It was during this time that scientific disciplines such as biology, chemistry, and physics reached their modern shapes. That same time period also included the origin of the terms "scientist" and "scientific community", the founding of scientific institutions, and the increasing significance of their interactions with society and other aspects of culture.”

So up until the twentieth century, science as a type of knowledge was more closely linked to philosophy; it no longer is in any way is associated with philosophy, except by a few people with degrees in Philosophy and you Jan Pahl.

“You can be a painter and a musician, and even used ideas of one teckne to apply to the other teckne, but obviously what you produce have differences, you can’t create music paint.”

Who in the modern English speaking world use the word “teckne”,

Logic is a branch of philosophy.

There is no such thing as the Epistemology of science which you claim is a branch of philosophy. Or, do you mean history of science?

I guess everything man invents and thinks about is a branch of philosophy.

Epistemology, meaning knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with the theory of knowledge.
The word epistemology is derived from the ancient Greek epistēmē meaning "knowledge" and the suffix -logy, meaning "logical discourse" (derived from the Greek word logos meaning "discourse"). J.F. Ferrier coined epistemology on the model of 'ontology', to designate that branch of philosophy which aims to discover the meaning of knowledge, and called it the 'true beginning' of philosophy. The word is equivalent to the concept Wissenschaftslehre, which was used by German philosophers Johann Fichte and Bernard Bolzano for different projects before it was taken up again by Husserl. French philosophers then gave the term épistémologie a narrower meaning as 'theory of knowledge [théorie de la connaissance].' E.g., Émile Meyerson opened his Identity and Reality, written in 1908, with the remark that the word 'is becoming current' as equivalent to 'the philosophy of the sciences.'

Wow, mankind doesn’t know what knowledge is? Where do they get this nonsense?

Theory of knowledge is nonsense. The history of knowledge is well documented.

Man and animals initially gain knowledge through their senses. Man and animals learn from this knowledge, e.g., don’t touch fire or you will get burned. They pass this information down to their offspring, friends and others. And, some humans write books about what they have observed and learned from those observations and sensory feedback. As man evolved they created libraries for the various books that had been written. They developed mythologies for classifying and organizing those books in the libraries, enumerative, hierarchical and faceted or analytico-synthetic.

What are you talking about when you say “there wasn’t a real sense of different phenomena”? So, man did not know the difference between the phenomena of it raining on his house versus it being struck by lightning and burning down. Yes, proofs in math are different because they deal with abstracts.

Definition of mathematics: “the abstract science of number, quantity, and space. Mathematics may be studied in its own right (pure mathematics), or as it is applied to other disciplines such as physics and engineering (applied mathematics)”.

What exactly is your definition of a ‘proof in philosophy’?

The Ionian tribe existed 600 – 48- BC. Plato existed 427 BC to 347 BC, Classical Athens. Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece and the founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western World.

My favorite Plato quote is:

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”
Spectrum
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by Spectrum »

George1949 wrote:Nope. That is just your opinion, which is only relevant here, for what it isn't worth.

Nice attempt at an analogy, but there is no such thing as an "orchestra of Science." Science has an overall framework and it has nothing to do with philosophy. To establish a proof in science, you need to begin with a premise, e.g., the earth is round or the earth revolves around the sun then support it with provable facts or empirical evidence, e.g., photographs from space station. You cannot do that in philosophy, e.g., God exists, what is good versus evil, man has a soul, there is a heaven and Hades, etc.
Spectrum wrote:The establishment of the overall Framework and System of Science to work effectively with its establishment of assumption, principles, ethics, scientific method, peer review, etc. is fundamentally a philosophical endeavor.
There is no way Science can use science itself to manage itself and the manager is philosophy with its philosophical skills.
Before Science can be 'Science' there must be an overall Framework and System of Science to work [explicit or implicit]. If the scientific Framework and System is not based on philosophy, what is this imperative preceding process then?

I view Philosophy-proper as the main set and Philosophy-subject as the subset. What you are referring to is Philosophy as a specific subject but you have overlooked what is Philosophy-proper.
Another point you overlooked is Eastern and other Philosophies in substance which has the same as Western Philosophy but their forms are different.

Science can exists without philosophy as a subject but Science cannot exists without Philosophy-proper which holds Science together.

It is the same with any faculty of knowledge which is preceded by philosophy-proper in setting up its specific framework and system. This is why we have the commonly seen "Philosophy of X" where X can be anything, including Philosophy of Science.
Not-a-theist. Religion is a critical necessity for humanity now, but not the FUTURE.
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George1949
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

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You are entitled to you delusion about what science consists of and your misinformed opinion that science is a philosophy.

I presented my information about science, which you have ignored.

Philosophy is dead and a pointless endeavor. It is a good elective for fulfilling your college degree requirements.

Only the sciences deal with provable testable evidence that has any relevance to the real world.

Philosophy should be taught as a history course on how man thought before science.

Philosophy deals with esoteric non-provable subjects that have no benefit to anything, e.g., God, the soul, mind, free will, and ethics. All these are very subjective and vary from one person to the next and from one society to the next.

In Philosophy there are no testable hypotheses, just your opinion based on subjective nonsense and your opinion.
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Atreyu
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by Atreyu »

George1949 wrote:You are entitled to you delusion about what science consists of and your misinformed opinion that science is a philosophy.

I presented my information about science, which you have ignored.

Philosophy is dead and a pointless endeavor. It is a good elective for fulfilling your college degree requirements.

Only the sciences deal with provable testable evidence that has any relevance to the real world.

Philosophy should be taught as a history course on how man thought before science.

Philosophy deals with esoteric non-provable subjects that have no benefit to anything, e.g., God, the soul, mind, free will, and ethics. All these are very subjective and vary from one person to the next and from one society to the next.

In Philosophy there are no testable hypotheses, just your opinion based on subjective nonsense and your opinion.
This is all a load of bull, and is often the kind of response one gets when the author isn't very adept at philosophy.

Philosophy is the proper matrix from which new theories should be developed. And good philosophy is not "subjective nonsense", it's based on sound reasoning. Poor philosophy may be based on "subjective nonsense", but not good philosophy. The adept philosopher proposes ideas that science should later attempt to develop into good theory. And, unfortunately, without good ideas modern science is quite adept and providing complex "proofs" for ideas which actually are inherently false. Similar to the religious fundamentalists who argue that all the fossil evidence was planted there by the devil to deceive people, only the arguments are much more intelligent, reasonable, and complex. But nevertheless, often they are just as fundamentally false....
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by Togo1 »

George1949 wrote:You are entitled to you delusion about what science consists of and your misinformed opinion that science is a philosophy.

I presented my information about science, which you have ignored.
Looked like a whole load of opinion to me, based on some fairly shakey reasoning. Have you tried analysing your reasoning around how philosophy is useless using formal logic? Or failing that, as a formal arguement? Or simply structuring it in a systemic manner?
George1949 wrote:Philosophy is dead and a pointless endeavor. It is a good elective for fulfilling your college degree requirements.

Only the sciences deal with provable testable evidence that has any relevance to the real world.
Well, I guess I'll bring up the standard objection to this one, the one that was demonstrated back in the 60's: If all that's relevant to the real world is provable testable evidence, then where does that leave your assertion that Philosophy is pointless? Is it a testable via evidence, or is it irrelevent to the real world?
George1949 wrote:Philosophy deals with esoteric non-provable subjects that have no benefit to anything, e.g., God, the soul, mind, free will, and ethics. All these are very subjective and vary from one person to the next and from one society to the next.
No, they don't. And that's easy to demonstrate. Take a philosophy textbook from, say the US, and see what it says on say, the mind body problem. Then pick up a philosophy textbook from the UK. Now pick up a book on neuropsychology, or animal behaviour, or psychiatric medicine, in each country. Look for the similarities.

Testing your assertion, we should expect to see no consistency at all. Yet, mysteriously, all these sources, scientific and non-scientific, appear to agree on the issue, and cite the same arguements. I appreciate that the agreement is complicated, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
George1949 wrote:In Philosophy there are no testable hypotheses, just your opinion based on subjective nonsense and your opinion.
Are there any testable hypotheses in your arguement?

If so, can you point them out and under what conditions they were tested?

If not, that suggests that your own arguement suggests that your own arguement is subjective nonsense. Is that the case?
NicoL
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by NicoL »

George1949 wrote: My favorite Plato quote is:

“Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.”
It's a bit ironic you mention this quote, as you are criticising, and quite passionately, something that is obvious you are not even remotely familiar with.

What is the scientific definition of "knowledge", "definition", "proposition", "datum", "observation", "truth"? And what is so absurd with rationalism, given that you cannot learn to learn, or that -(p^-p) ? Do you also have a beef with pure mathematics which are just as non-empirical as philosophy is? And why focus on God issues, out of the extensive curriculum of philosophy?
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George1949
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by George1949 »

First off, mathematics is not a philosophy and has nothing to do with philosophy

Cavemen that still believe that philosophy has any relevance, except maybe being taught as a history class on how humans thought before science methodology became the norm in the real world, astound me.

There is no such thing as the mind-body problem. It is more nonsense created by cavemen philosophers.

You have no basis for anything you claim is solved by philosophy.
NicoL
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Re: Can Science Exist Without Philosophy?

Post by NicoL »

George1949 wrote:First off, mathematics is not a philosophy and has nothing to do with philosophy
They are different disciplines, but both have more in common with each other (and with logic) than with science. For one, none of them is empirical. Also, they all elaborate the formal conceptual framework required to actually do science.
George1949 wrote:Cavemen that still believe that philosophy has any relevance, except maybe being taught as a history class on how humans thought before science methodology became the norm in the real world, astound me.
Empiricism on which the scientific method is founded is a philosophical theory. The methodology of science itself is a philosophical field. And besides, most of the people here are scientists and engineers: you have not entered a cave. The problem lies in your lack of substantial exposure to formal philosophy, which is obvious to anyone in here. You are prejudiced (and probably a teenager), not enlightened.
George1949 wrote:There is no such thing as the mind-body problem. It is more nonsense created by cavemen philosophers.
That's actually a metaphysical position, unless you can produce some sort of evidence that supports your conviction.
George1949 wrote:You have no basis for anything you claim is solved by philosophy.
Again, what evidence are you going to produce in order to justify this universal quantification?
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