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From: asanders@adobe.COM
Newsgroups: news.groups
Subject: Re: SCI.PHILOSOPHY.OBJECTIVISM
Message-ID: <1741@adobe.UUCP>
Date: 2 Feb 90 22:50:19 GMT
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cash@convex.com writes:

>...The dictionary is a good place for finding superficial information about 
>words; don't expect profundity or keen insight there...When Webster's talks 
>about philosophy as a "science", "science" is surely used in the very loosest 
>sense.  Science is empirical; to be scientific, a question must--at least in 
>theory--be capable of resolution by experiment...


Personally, I have found the dictionary to be full of keen insights. The
derivation of words is often especially revealing of their deeper meaning.

For example:

science -- from the Latin *sciens* ("having knowledge"), which is in turn
           from *scire* ("to know"), akin to *scindere* ("to cut").

philosophy -- from the Greek *phil-* ("loving") + *sophia* ("wisdom").

empirical -- from the Greek *empeiria* ("experience").


Mind you, I am not particularly interested in debating whether philosophy
is a science. In the first place, we would have to begin by considering the
question: "what is science?" It is not necessarily confined to the incredibly
specialized investigations that characterize modern scientific practice. And
philosophy, for all its "scientific" inexactness, is (in its best sense)
based just as surely upon observable phenomena as "science" is. The point
being: the more "cut and dried" the analysis, the less objective the
conclusion.

-Alan