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From: smoliar@vaxa.isi.edu (Stephen Smoliar)
Newsgroups: sci.philosophy.tech
Subject: Re: Definition of science and of scientific method.
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Date: Fri, 17-Jul-87 11:26:54 EDT
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Posted: Fri Jul 17 11:26:54 1987
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In article <813@klipper.cs.vu.nl> biep@cs.vu.nl (J. A. "Biep" Durieux) writes:
>4) Philosophy starts with quarreling about whether God exists, then whether
>I exist (some say the other way round - for "God" some read "anything at all"),
>then whether an outside world exist, then how we should look at that world
>(yielding things like epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, etc.), and,
>choosing epistemology, which ways of getting knowledge are there and which
>ones have which value.

While I may be inclined, in most respects, to agree with this characterization
of philosophy, I think it is worth observing that it is highly opinionated.
Furthermore, it reflects an assessment of philosophy as it has come to be,
as opposed to a historical perspective.  For the latter, I feel it might be
valuable to bring Bertrand Russell into this discussion by quoting from the
final two paragraphs of Chapter IX of his A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY:

	Democritus--such, at least, is my opinion--is the last of the
	Greek philosophers to be free from a certain fault which vitiated
	all later ancient and medieval thought.  All the philosophers
	we have been considering so far were engaged in a disinterested
	effort to understand the world.  They thought it easier to
	understand than it is, but without this optimism they would
	not have had the courage to make a beginning.  Their attitude,
	in the main, was genuinely scientific whenever it did not
	merely embody the prejudices of their age.  But it was not
	ONLY scientific;  it was imaginative and vigorous and filled
	with the delight of adventure.  They were interested in
	everything--meteors and eclipses, fishes and whirlwinds,
	religion and morality;  with a penetrating intellect they
	combined the zest of children.

	From this point onwards, there are first certain seeds of
	decay, in spite of previously unmatched achievement, and
	then a gradual decadence.  What is amiss, even in the best
	philosophy after Democritus, is an undue emphasis on man as
	compared with the universe.  First comes scepticism, with
	the Sophists, leading to a study of HOW we know rather than
	to the attempt to acquire fresh knowledge.  Then comes, with
	Socrates, the emphasis on ethics;  with Plato, the rejection
	of the world of sense in favour of the self-created world of
	pure thought;  with Aristotle, the belief in purpose as the
	fundamental concept in science.  In spite of the genius of
	Plato and Aristotle, their thought has vices which proved
	infinitely harmful.  After their time, there was a decay
	of vigour, and a gradual recrudescence of popular superstition.
	A partially new outlook arose as a result of the victory of
	Catholic orthodoxy;  but it was not until the Renaissance that
	philosophy regained the vigour and independence that characterize
	the predecessors of Socrates.

I particularly like Russell's phrase:  "an undue emphasis on man as compared
with the universe."  It seems to me (and I recently tried to express this in
a review of EPISTEMOLOGY AND COGNITION) that the conceptual gulf which
separates the sciences from the humanities is that the humanities place
the emphasis on the "human"--what it is that makes man worthy of special
consideration--while the sciences regard man as a component of the universe.
Because they are, themselves, human, scientists do not consider this view
as demeaning as humanists appear to, because they know that components are
judged more by the roles they play than by the company they keep.  However,
I fear that as long as the humanities (and this, sad to say, includes most
of philosophy) cling to their insistence that man be regarded as something
special, there will continue to be this gulf between the "two cultures;"
and as the sciences inquire more and more into the nature of mind, this
gulf can only widen.