as I contemplate a response to the question posed by
Justice… I have another response…
the demarcation problem…
in the philosophy of science the demarcation problem is a large one and
the problem goes like this… how do we know which sciences are real sciences
and which are pseudoscience? Like is astrology on the same level as astronomy?
or is Astrology a pseudoscience and astronomy a real science? the problem comes
in do you restrict so much that you leave out real sciences or do you relax the
criteria and allow some pseudoscience in with real science?
This demarcation problem is, in part, why Kuhn wrote his famous book,
“The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”…
so one may ask, why do you care about this problem?
I suspect that philosophy and science and history has a demarcation problem
and the problem goes like this, how do we tell where philosophy begins and science
end and where does philosophy ends and history begins and where are the lines
between philosophy, science and history?
Philosophy has been around 2500 years and science was a part
of philosophy for over 2000 of those years…it has only been in the last
couple of hundred years that philosophy and science has separated…
how does history fit into all this?
we all know that philosophy is the love of wisdom…
History comes from the a Greek word meaning Inquiry, knowledge
acquired by investigation…
Science: what is known, knowledge acquired by study, assurance of knowledge,
this word is from the Latin “Scientia”
so, we see that all three words, science, philosophy and history derive from
the same basic ideas, inquiry, knowledge, investigations…
now we must use each area, science, philosophy and history to explore different
aspects of our world but each is an inquiry, a search for knowledge…
so what else do these words suggest to us?
that each of them, by different means, explore what it means to
be human and each explores the human question…
who are we, what are we, when are we, how are we, where are we,
and why are we? Who, what, when, where, how and why are the 6 questions
we must always ask ourselves… like a good journalist, we must ask
these 6 questions constantly… who, what, when, where, how and why…
I suggest that there is no great difference between science and philosophy
and history… each in their own way, explores what it means to be human,
each explores how it means to be human and each explores the why of being
human…science says, I am a human and the universe around me looks like
this… and history says, we can know what it means to be human by our
past actions…philosophy can say, we are human and it means this…
philosophy tries to give the facts that science and history tell us and philosophy
tells us the values of those facts… science and history are about facts (facts which are
changeable and not ever set in stone) and philosophy tells us what the value
of those facts…philosophy has failed in part because it operates outside of history,
philosophy tries to be isolated from other questions we have about ourselves…
Hegel was the first philosopher who tried to incorporate history into philosophy
and that is his great claim to fame… he centered philosophy in history and
made us aware that history and philosophy have a common theme…
Kant didn’t try to connect history into philosophy… Kant’s philosophy was
separated, isolated from the historical events and happenings of the time…
Just like Plato… you can’t tell what was happening historically at the time
Plato was writing… his philosophy is separate, isolated from not only
history, but from life… think about his idea about the cave and eternal
idea’s…those ideas of Plato exist outside of history…philosophy,
true philosophy cannot be separated, isolated from history, isolated
from the events of the day… for those events tell us who we are and
how we are separated from or the same as the people who went before us…
the question facing all three, science, philosophy and history is simple…
and all three approach that question from different sides, but the questions
for all three is still the same… who is man, what is man, when is man,
where is man, how is man and why is man? what is the human experience?
and how does the past human experience tells us about us today?
You must approach philosophy from a historical, scientific
and philosophical understanding… and all three approaches
from the same way, inquiry, knowledge acquired by investigation…
about this living creature we call, a human being…
Kropotkin