Philosophy is somewhere between the two, questioning matters concerning our lives but as science by its very nature is all about continuing to find the answers to questions, philosophy also has largely gone the same way as religion and become irrelevant.
While philosophical musings were common in more unenlightened times when man's knowledge was more restricted, it is hard to think of any philosophical question that Science today couldn't answer or wouldn't be able to answer in the near future.
The questions religion and philosophy attempt to answer all began with the word 'Why' but the questions science attempt to answer begin with 'How' and base their answers on proof and evidence as they currently understand them.
That is why philosophy has gone the same way as religion, replaced by Science answering the How questions which in turn makes the Why questions redundant and for a time when we were not advanced or knowledgeable enough to answer them based on the evidence which is why we had strange people like Diogenes who thought too long and hard that he went a bit loopy and gave up all his possessions and clothing and went to live in a barrel where he died demonstrating that a person could hold their breath until they died (he was right) and Plato who studied all of the most puzzling questions in life like why are we here, what is reality and what happened to that massive bit of land off the coast of Gibraltar called Atlantis.
Descartes pondered on whether we were just brains in a vat that thinks it's living in the real world and came up with the most famous philosophical quote ever ' I think therefore i am' which means you must exist because you are thinking about possibly not existing.
Voltaire was sent to live in England for his crimes against the state for his ponderings on religion because the officials figured that sending a Frenchman to live in England would be a far worse punishment than any prison sentence they could offer which to be fair, is a fair shout.
2 comments:
Ehhhh, better than most of your explanations, but you left out Newton.
Newton bifurcated philosophy and science with the introduction of calculus, albeit kept secret by him.
Sure the other contributors are important, but it is Newton that had the biggest impact. His introduction of calculus into the fray that was the straw that broke the camels back.
Science hasn't come all that far. The idea that if we could just find the smallest part of existence we could understand everything has fallen apart. Quantum wiped that idea out.
And, like it or not, look at the similarity between physics and the early analogies of Genesis to find how little the Why has advanced with science:
- in the beginning there was darkness... and God said let there be light = big bang
- eating fruit from the tree of knowledge = development of the conscious part of our brains which separates humans from other species... evolution... Darwin)
- God created all in 6 days = at speed of light time slows, God was able to create all in 6 days though it was billions of years to us... Einstein)
- noah's ark = evolution (the animals that didn't get onboard perished... Darwin)
and nothing in science or philosophy begins to explain how existence exists. how nothing became something, or how there was never nothing.
get off the science high horse. science is awesome for many things, but not explaining existence or creation
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