Wednesday, August 7, 2013

Philosophy Then Science

I want to say that Philosophy and Science are two complementary practices that both deal with the fundamental relation between Man and World. This is the way that I conceive of them.

In the beginning is the life. Man is in the world. Man encounters phenomena. Man finds ways of living with the phenomena and even thriving. In the course of thriving, man turns back to look on his practices and wonders what he might be able to make out of those practices.

Philosophy arises as he builds models of the world. He turns the raw phenomena into concepts utilizing properties and continuums, relates the concepts together based on what he observes, builds a model of his world using reason and language that seeks to go deeper than the appearances.

Science arises when several competing philosophies arise and it becomes necessary to begin measuring those philosophies. Science takes the predictions that the philosophies make and then compares them back to the world of appearance to see which philosophies best predict and explain the appearances that arise. In this case, the world of appearance is referred to as empirical data, and the comparisons are referred to as experiments.

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