@TheAstroChuck thank you for your clarification. I only mentioned the nomenclature because of the usage of the terms such as kingdom and family.

@TheAstroChuck very erudite answer ... Who deals with the consequences of destructive technologies? Nuclear power plants that fail? Diesel engines emitting toxic exhaust gases? And the fact that many technologies deprive people of the abilty to be active? Car mechanics are powerless without acces to the onboard comtuers ... Listening to talks by some scientist are most fascinating.even if some are excellent communicators in their respective fields, they hardly ever address the impact of their research. GPS is certainly good to have, but if people can no longer function without all the technological crutches ...

@TheAstroChuck Are they not?

@TheAstroChuck I don’t see how, what is the scientific method after all? What is the ultimate goal of science? Why is science the best epistemology as opposed to astrology? Science has its foundations deeply rooted in philosophy, perhaps much more than you might realize. Anytime we as non-believers argue with those who are skeptical of science we engage in a philosophical debate and we deprive ourselves of an extremely useful set of tools when we wrongly try to deny the philosophical roots of science.

You actually can’t separate philosophy from science either. Let’s go through the following gedanken experiment: I am a physicist who is attempting to explain why is it when electricity flows there are resistive losses in metals (I.e why there are no perfect room temperature conductors). I make the following argument:

1. The point particle that electrical flow consists of is called the frequency electron
2. Each electron that flows has a momentum
3. The particle undergoes inelastic collisions, collisions wherein only a particles momentum is conserved, but not it’s energy.
4. Since each particle undergoes this process, we get a net loss of life energy overtime: this is the resistive loss we see in metals.

Now you might say, “hey that sounds perfectly reasonable” and it is a logical argument, unfortunately it’s completely inaccurate, but it is logically sound. How do I know that you might ask, because experiments show that the electron isn’t always a point particle: that means it isn’t a tiny little ball running into thing classically. What actually happens is defects in the material and thermal noise ultimately end up causing the loss of energy of each particle which ends up aggregating with a net loss of energy which is what we know as resistance.

Okay now I know that was a lot but here’s the takeaway: you can’t separate philosophy from science: such an attempt would be like trying to do physics without math (math itself is even more tied into philosophy since it’s pure deductive reasoning whereas physics involves mostly inductive reasoning to reach its conclusions). See, I’m even using branches of logic to describe different but related philosophical pursuits like physics and math. So yes, you can’t separate physics, math, and engineering: because they are tied together through philosophy in a pretty strong way.

Take it away Gary,

@TheAstroChuck I never used personal incredulity as my sole defense. So the gist of my Gedanken experiment was that empiricism (another branch of philosophy) is used to separate two logically consistent frameworks (pure rationalism fails to do this properly). The overall point being is this: trying to divorce the natural sciences from philosophy is the same thing as trying to divorce math from science. The physical sciences are a subset of philosophy and heavily depend on it.

“Philosophy once had its roots in religion” there’s a false equivocation going on here: what did philosophy inherit from religion? What did the natural sciences inherit from philosophy? Initially perhaps religion and philosophy may have been basically he same thing as were natural science and philosophy, but here’s the thing science has inherited methods and tools that are external to it (philosophy has no such inheritance from religion as evidenced by atheistic theology) and depend on different branches of philosophy. If you divorce philosophy from physics for example, then say goodbye to using math as that is deductive logic, say goodbye to the assumption of naturalism (now you have effectively given creationists the ability to say: science has nothing to say about my god so stay in your lane perpetrator of scientism!). Like empiricism? Too bad you threw it out along with all the other philosophical tools etc. You keep doing this until your just left with the ability to ponder about things without any concept of an objective truth (hello solipsism, my dear old vat).

Now I suspect your objection is more closely focused on rationalism than philosophy as your objection mirror those of the empircists. Now if this is your contention, then fair enough: I agree, just don’t throw the baby out along with the bath water. Philosophy as a whole is invaluable to science and strengthens it.

@TheAstroChuck Please do elaborate why any of the following premises are wrong:

(1) IF one is doing empirical science, THEN one has taken a conceptual and evaluative side.

(2) IF one has taken a conceptual and evaluative side AND one has NOT engaged in appropriate discourse, THEN one is being hypocritical and conceited

(3) IF one has taken a conceptual and evaluative side AND one has engaged in appropriate discourse, THEN one is doing philosophy.

(4) Either one has engaged in appropriate discourse OR one has NOT engaged in appropriate discourse.

Edit:”discourae” to “discourse”

@Wavefunction I believe thought that Science is more invaluable to Philosophy than the other way round.

@TheAstroChuck Well I am by training a physicist, it seems to me that you object to certain philosophical schools of thought rather than philosophy as a whole. I do as well, for example: I object to pure rationalism since it often fails to account for real world observations. I am more of an empiricist (probably why I am training to become a scientist instead of a mathematician). I also think that pure philosophy is distinct enough from the sciences to be clearly differentiable. I get where you are coming from, if someone asked me “if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, did it really happen” my answer would be somewhere along the lines of “Sure, since a tree is of sufficient mass to be bounded by the laws of Newtonian mechanics” which I’m sure a pure philosopher might have a problem with because I haven’t stated all of my assumptions leading up to that answer.

I’ll be honest here though: I really don’t understand what you mean when you say philosophy as a whole is irreconcilable with the natural sciences. I can only charitably assume you mean some branches of philosophically are irreconcilable with the natural sciences. Sure, pure philosophy works with less assumptions/constraints than the natural sciences does which is why they are distinct enough for me to differentiate the two.

@TheAstroChuck, @Algernon Science certainly contributes to broader philosophy absolutely, questions of morality, justice, etc sure. I don’t think it’s a competition between the two though: they are two friends who might spat here and there but the ultimate goal is the cultivation of truth in the pursuit of wisdom.

@TheAstroChuck Ah okay, then we do agree as that was basically my argument as well. It was a good post and I had a fun time with it!

@TheAstroChuck, well, Philosophy should catch up with Science because without it, it'll be just a sterile mental exercise.

@TheAstroChuck, by the way which rifts are you referring to?

@TheAstroChuck, I disagree. Philosophy will never cease to exist because there are always multiple interpretation to every given truth.

@TheAstroChuck, besides Science by its very definition is never completely settle. It's just a collection of theories that can be overturned when new evidence comes across. Moreover Science is dynamic, meaning that there are always new truth to be discovered when it answers the questions of the time. New answers brings a new set of questions. Philosophy therefore could lay on that never settling boundary.

@TheAstroChuck unfortunately in Science there is not such thing as a completely settled theory. There are only good theories against bad theories. Theories that match empirical data are good while the ones which don't aren't. However I agree with you that the Correspondence Principle is not arbitrary but a powerful tool to reinforce a theory. A theory which matches a preexistent good theory and also matches further observations the previous theory failed to explain, is a doubly good theory.

@TheAstroChuck, maybe we're saying the same thing but stressing different aspects. Just to give you an example: Newton's laws of gravitation are correct in the mean that they have an outstanding good level of prediction but they are alas based on a totally wrong interpretation of what gravity really is. Einstein's interpretation is much more correct and the actual equations have a wider predictive power, for they can account on phenomena on the realm of very high velocities and gravitational fields but still incomplete because it can't be incorporated in a single unified law of everything. So a theory, even one that gives good approximation or even an almost perfect prediction of empirical data, is still just an interpretation that may brake down when new empirical data with correspondingly better and in depth theories are going to be discovered and made sense of.
Maybe we should say that the best theories are not the one which can explain only a subset of phenomena (like Newton's laws) but those which can embrace a wider set of systems. The best theory of them all will of course be the holy grail of unification: a grand Theory of Everything.

@TheAstroChuck I asked how you consider them to be joined and you didn't answer. The example of the differing response to the tree question does not mean they are joined. I explained that with the counterpoint to the color black between art and science.

If your discussion begins on an assumption that you can't or don't feel you need to explain, then there's a gap in your philosophical process and you're just spouting multi-syllabic words to feel smart.

Thank you for your explanation, I had thought you were blowing me off so I apologize about my tone. When it comes down to it then, I agree with you that they can and should co-exist without mingling. I don't necessarily agree that they are joined however I wouldn't be able to address properly the formal aspect you refer to.

@TheAstroChuck Well in practice they are formally distinct: yes the doctoral degree says “Philosophy”, but they are separate departments: I thought you were arguing to purge philosophy from science. So I would like to ask then what would you consider sufficient separation of the two?

Edit: changed “them” to “then” and “conside” to “you consider”: it’s hard to type correctly on my phone apparently.