Philosophy or Science

What can be said about the rising importance of science and the seemingly loss of validity of philosophy in the world today?...

With the rise of science as a guiding force of culture and society partially replacing some of the influence of religion, philosophy began to become an orphan. The increasing success of scientific research, practice and engineering began to place heavy strains on the foundations of philosophy. Part of the response to the dominance of science and scientific methods was analytic philosophy, which attempts to disassemble logic and experience into discrete verifiable parts. This was an attempt to ‘harden’ philosophy into a provable system and away from its speculative origins.

This has been one of the dominant themes of philosophy for the past century, brought about by the stress of competing with science. But recent comments indicate that the strengthening of philosophy by adopting a rationalist approach have not completely succeeded.

There are many other approaches to describing reality other than science. Science is incredibly strong and can do many things. But science is limited by the box defined by the outer reaches of its understanding. Phenomena beyond the capabilities of current science and scientific method cannot be explained, and the relationships of these phenomena to the events of our understanding are ignored or misinterpreted. There is no way around this. It is the nature of the system.

So science can only describe so much and beyond that is speculation. When we discuss phenomena and relationships beyond the limits of that comprehension we are speculating. We are speculating either as isolated individuals who can only experience the world in our own particular way, or as part of a connected experience of all people and things in the world. So our speculation is either completely individual or shared with the world around us.

Now believing in science and using it as the sole guide in interpreting reality is somewhat like taking a leap of faith to a divine, all-knowing, omnipotent creator. And that is where philosophy returns and may be a good place to start our questioning today. What unexplained and seemingly unrelated phenomena affect the experience of our existence? Are we connected and in what ways? And if we are connected what does that say about our ability to ‘know’ the world around us?

Science is definitely dominant in our times and the notion of a speculative discipline to minds embodied in rigorous method can easily be ridiculed. But beyond science, beyond our current enamorment with the works that we create the edges are all speculation. Love it and embrace it. It is all that we have.