The dialectic between science and philosophy

 This is a consequence of a question I answered on Quora. It was upvoted by the person who requested it, which is very rare for me (might have happened once before).

Naturally, I invoke one of my favourite metaphors. Contrary to what some scientists claim (Stephen Hawking comes to mind) philosophy is not dead, and in fact science and philosophy have a healthy relationship.

 

The original question was:

 

I see a distinction between "Philosophy" which attempts to describe and explain the world and "Science" in which theories can be proven or disproven. Under this paradigm, what areas claiming to be Science are actually Philosophy? (Requested by Michael Wayne Box.)

 

There are, in fact, 98 answers to this question, many by academics, which makes my answer seem pretty pedestrian. But that’s okay; from what I've read, I took a different approach. I’m interested in how science and philosophy interact (particularly epistemology) rather than how they are distinct, though I address that as well. My answer below:

 

 

Science as we know it today is effectively a product of Western philosophy going all the way back to Plato’s Academy and even earlier. In fact, science was better known as ‘natural philosophy’ for much of that time.

 

Science and epistemology have a close relationship, and I would argue that it is a dialectical relationship. John Wheeler provides a metaphor that I find particularly appealing:

 

We live on an island of knowledge in a sea of ignorance. As the island of knowledge expands, so does the shoreline of our ignorance.

 

I came up with this metaphor myself, independently of Wheeler, and I always saw the island of knowledge as science and the shoreline as philosophy. Seen in this light, I contend that science and philosophy have a dialectical relationship. But there is another way of looking at it, and I’d like to quote Russell:

 

Thus, to sum up our discussion of the value of philosophy; Philosophy is to be studied, not for the sake of any definite answers to its question, since no definite answers can, as a rule, be known to be true, but rather for the sake of the questions themselves; because these questions enlarge our conception of what is possible, enrich our intellectual imagination and diminish the dogmatic assurance which closes the mind against speculation; but above all because, through the greatness of the universe, which philosophy contemplates, the mind is also rendered great, and becomes capable of that union with the universe which constitutes its highest good.’ (My emphasis)

 

And this, I believe, touches on the main distinction between science and philosophy: that philosophy asks questions for which we currently don’t have answers and science actually provides answers, even if they’re provisional. And that’s why I argue there is a dialectic, because, as soon as science gives us an answer, it also gives us new questions.

 

To provide examples: Do we live in a multiverse? Will AI become sentient? Was there something before the Big Bang? What is dark matter? How did DNA evolve? All these questions are on the shoreline of our island of knowledge. They are at the boundary between philosophy and science. But that boundary changes as per Wheeler’s metaphor.

 

 

 

That’s what I wrote on Quora, but I can’t leave this subject without talking about the role of mathematics. Curiously, mathematics is also linked to philosophy via Plato and his predecessors. So I will add a comment I wrote on someone else’s post. It might be hubris on my part, but 20^th Century’s preoccupation with language defining our epistemology seems to miss the point, because the Universe speaks to us in its own language, which is mathematical. 

 

With that in mind, this is what I wrote in response to a post that concluded, Philosophy will continue as it has for the past two and a half thousand years, but we presently stand over the wreckage of a philosophical tradition four centuries in the making.

 

 

 

I believe philosophy is alive and well; it’s just had a change of clothes. You can’t divorce philosophy from science, with which it has a dialectical relationship. And that’s just concerning epistemology and ontology.

 

The mistake made in the early 20th Century was to believe mathematics is an artefact created by logic, when in fact, logic is what we use to access mathematics. Godel’s theorem and Turing’s resolution to the halting problem, demonstrate that there will always exist mathematical ‘truths’ that we can’t prove (even if we prove them there will be others). In effect, Godel ‘proved’ (ironically) that there is a difference between ‘truth’ and ‘proof’ in mathematics.

 

But there’s more: Einstein and his cohorts involved in the scientific revolution that took up the whole 20th Century, showed that mathematics lies at the heart of nature. To quote Richard Feynman:

 

Physicists cannot make a conversation in any other language. If you want to learn about nature, to appreciate nature, it is necessary to understand the language that she speaks in. She offers her information only in one form.

 

So we have an epistemological link between the natural world and mathematics. It’s not human language that defines what we call reality, but mathematics. From what I read on this subject, it seems philosophers in general still haven’t caught up with this truth.