On Nature of Science and Philosophy

Science and philosophy often used to be the same and then they become different and the same over and over. Philosophy recently has been perceived as a field of hipsters and people with no ambition or sense of life. However, one can argue for both for it and against it. While science deals with concrete things with defined meanings, no one argues the meaning of Pi after all. Philosophy is rather abstract in a sense, it argues with meanings of meanings, while for one to ask what does it meant to be alive, one must define the terms “being” “living” and so on. It breaks down into a meta-analysis of meta-analysis, often leading to arguments for argument’s sake and victor merely decided by the preconceived biases of the judge. One might argue that the reason philosophy is often constricted and watered down so much is due to the limits of natural language. language, unlike math, can be interpreted in a highly subjective manner and subjectivity allows it to have the high level of flexibility that enable us to perform everyday conversations smoothly, but also limits the objective pinning down characteristic of mathematically driven science. Maybe when philosophy can shed the need for natural language in it’s conversations, it can overcome these difficulties? maybe.

But science surely has benefited from shedding philosophy right. Works of Galton and Freud helped neurosciences progress a lot by removing it away from philosophy, Post Galton the reason the genetic determinism of behaviors as a field of science only got held back majorly due to his followers acting through the philosophical beliefs of Eugenicism, had they been more empirical as Galton, neuroscience surely would have advanced further than it is today, right? sure, It would appear so. When it is so, can one merely delegate philosophy to useless musings and a thing of the past? Many would be tempted to I suppose. But then again philosophical movements like Marxist socialism is what that resulted in welfare of human beings through creation of gender equality and labor unions, which allowed education to be propagated to a wider group of people and not merely aristocrats. In the above way, is it not true that philosophy and it’s proponents bettered science. But again i suppose one could argue despite the lack of education or designation that carl Marx was a social psychologist and not a philosopher per say, because he spoke in terms accessible and practical to every day eventuality.

One might even argue that philosophy merely exists to make us feel good about our own subjectivity and ignorance, hence it is common in people of science because they recognize both in their environment more than others. One might even argue that, philosophy is what keeps scientists from nihilistic depression and that once that all the questions are answered philosophy may disappear. Philosophy is, therefore, can be labeled as the “Bible of the gaps” and merely serves as a self-fulfilling prophesy that is of no greater use. However, such a view of philosophy will attract huge swaths of hatred and for good reason.

Hence to put philosophy as something useless, is rather useless and self-centered, is a bit inappropriate. Indeed, one cannot argue the safety and strides produced only because reckless actions were prevented  by ethicists. Who again are philosophers?  Sure, there are many strawmen out there who, simply declare “It is against the will of god” and end the conversation there. But to argue that science has not gained philosophy mainly of ethicists, after all, it was the fact that science had ethical approval that allowed it to be flaunted to the general public, thereby bringing in more interests and overall resulting in more funding, which enabled greater understanding.