Science and Philosophy-Seeking Answers with Each Other
Dr.Suraksha Bansal2014
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Abstract
In many areas philosophy and science seems alike, Both of them are interested in knowledge, both of them asks questions and seek to determine answers, both of them uses inquiry and investigation and for both the goal is knowledge. Science and philosophy have always learned from each other. Philosophy tirelessly draws from scientific discoveries fresh strength, material for broad generalizations, while to the sciences it imparts the world-view and methodological impulses of its universal principles. Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought. The historical relationship between science and philosophy has not been a friendly one. We"ve all seen philosophy at its worst. Philosophers are often completely disconnected from reality and, more recently, don"t care. Rationalism, the view that only deductive knowledge is really reliable, is commonplace. Philosophers often expound their ideas from armchairs and ivory towers, where the facts of reality don"t concern them Can philosophy develop by itself, without the support of science? Can science "work" without philosophy? Some people think that the sciences can stand apart from philosophy, that the scientist should actually avoid philosophizing, the latter often being understood as groundless and generally vague theorizing. If the term philosophy is he given such a poor interpretation, then of course anyone would agree with the warning "Physics, beware of metaphysics!" But no such warning applies to philosophy in the higher sense of the term. The specific sciences cannot and should not break their connections with true philosophy. Now a day"s some people believes that science has reached such a level of theoretical thought that it no longer needs philosophy. But the scientists, particularly the theoreticians, knows in their heart that their creative activity is closely linked with philosophy and that without serious knowledge of philosophical culture the results of that activity cannot become theoretically effective. All the outstanding theoreticians have themselves been guided by philosophical thought and tried to inspire their students with its beneficent influence in order to make them specialists capable of comprehensively and critically analyzing all the principles and systems known to science, discovering their internal contradictions and overcoming them by means of new concepts. Real scientists, and the scientists with a powerful theoretical grasp, have never turned their backs on philosophy. Truly scientific thought is philosophical to the core, just as truly philosophical thought is profoundly scientific, rooted in the sum-total of scientific achievements Philosophical training gives the scientist a breadth and penetration, a wider scope in posing and resolving problems. Philosophy is not simply an abstract science. It also possesses an evaluative aspect, its moral principles. Science has given man a lot of things, but ethics or, to put it more bluntly, conscience is not one of them. The evaluative, axiological and aesthetic aspects are also important for science.
