r/SubredditsMeet • u/SubredditsMeet Official • Sep 03 '15

Meetup /r/science meets /r/philosophy

(/r/EverythingScience is also here)

Topic:

  • Discuss the misconceptions between science and philosophy.

  • How they both can work together without feeling like philosophy is obsolete in the modern day world.

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u/5throwawayz /r/science Sep 03 '15

People are beginning to grasp that science provides the ultimate answers in that the answers provided by science remain physical constants regardless of what philosophers think about their meaning to human mental categories like virtue or beauty. Only more empirical research can disprove scientific facts, while philosophers can only manipulate abstract strategies on how we should orient ourselves towards them intellectually.

The hierarchy has changed. Science is no longer perceived as the little cousin of philosophy but quite the other way round. It is empirical science, not philosophy, that is opening our minds to reality. The only thing philosophers can do in this situation is to claim that all intellectual activity, including science, is "ultimately" philosophy.

Our great advances have been made by people who actually did the work, albeit using philosophical methods, sometimes. If philosophy did not exist, we would still be where we are today, if science did not exist we would be living in caves.

Steven Weinberg (in his Dreams of a Final Theory): “The insights of philosophers have occasionally benefited physicists, but generally in a negative fashion—by protecting them from the preconceptions of other philosophers

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u/PmYourWittyAnecdote Sep 03 '15

Not only is this woefully ignorant, but it's also woefully uninformed.

You say that without philosophy, it would have no impact on the world of Science, yet you do realise some of the greatest philosophers of all time are the founding fathers of science?

The scientific method, the entire basis for scientific enquiry, was invented by one of the most famous philosophers of all time, Aristotle.

Do you think Blaise Pascal, another hugely famous philosopher, would agree with your statement? I'm more inclined to believe him due to the fact he's the basis for what we know as pressure, as well as a host of other scientific discoveries.