Whilst on a research trip to Bavaria, it suddenly occurred to me:
‘How far are science and philosophy compatible?’
Does one supercede the other?
What is the value of each?
If you had to choose between one or the other to keep for society, which would it be?
They’re not in any way contradictory as far as I can see. They compliment each other.
The basics of the approach are a little different between science and philosophy: science is about prediction (knowing what result you’ll get by doing something) while philosophy is about description (knowing what it is that you have).
On the other hand, philosophy and science are inseparable in a lot of ways. Take modern physics… when it comes to relativity and quantum theories scientists are philosophers and philosophers are scientists.
But, since science can produce the internet and philosophy can’t, I guess I’d keep science. 
[This message has been edited by Paul (edited 17 March 2002).]
Interesting…I think that they are not comparable as they work on different levels. One is far more everyday. As Paul pointed out science has given us the net and a whole lot more. But philosophy, while not producing such obvious results, has contributed to tolerance and understanding. They are both important, unique and I don’t think either supersedes the other.
But if pressed I’d choose science as it can cure diseases, improve life and allow us to continue philosophising!
Olly
it is easy to forget that all science began life a philosophy, and that the first scientists were philosophers.
philosophers are out there searching for answers… some particularly successful ones find answers which are a coherant way of structuring what we perceive of the world around us("laws of physics and all that)… hey presto! a science is born.
the way i see it - philosophy is just generally people who try to find things out about existence etc. and science derives from this.
Well, science and philosophy were once one and the same thing remember, so I think it’s fair to say that they have common goals(which essentially boils down to the understanding of our world I guess).
But how far does this original compatibility extend today though? I think their approach - regardless of the similar aims of each method - ensures that they are independent doctrines. The way I see it, science is the search for truth, bound strongly in the empirical method, where as philosophy searches for falsity - so that it can be eliminated - via the rational/logical method. The fact that they are independant (though not necessarily mutually exclusive) can be demonstrated by the completely different answers arrived at by each of them. The question “what is the meaning of life?” approached from a scientific angle would probably necessitate an answer along the lines of “to procreate and propogate the species”, though, as I’m sure you all know, if you approach the same question from a philosophical angle, there is virtually no end to the possible answers, so long as they are consistant with prior (or a priori) knowledge, and the answer is not self-contradictory.
As for which is more important? Difficult to answer I suppose. Philosophy - born of natural human curiosity - will always precede any scientific method for the simple reason that to create a scientific method (and science does require some form of universal, consistant method to be at all workable) requires a logical, pragmatic, curious mind to form it. Also, I think that so long as you have a being that has this philosophical frame of mind, science in one form or another must develop eventually as that being comes to desire a more concrete, empirically verifiable standard of truth. So, I suppose, if I had to commit myself to an answer one way or another, I’d say that philosophy was the more important method, as the philosophical method can give birth to the scientific method as time passes on, but science cannot give birth to philosophy… the way I see it anyway.
Philosophy is asking questions, Science is answering them. Simple! 
[This message has been edited by clara (edited 28 March 2002).]
I’ve always thought of science and philosophy as being nearly the same, and philosophical thought has always seemed somewhat like scientiric method to me. Eraticus is pretty much saying what i am attempting to, only much more effectively.
personally, i see philosophy as a branch of science, in the same way that biology or chemistry are - science being a general effort to explain ourselves and our surroundings, and the branches of it being concerned with one particular area.
Something that no one seems to have mentioned is that philosophy may inform science.
An example: philosophical analysis of the eliminativist neurophysiology program instructed scientists not to eradicate higher-theoretical explanations of mental states, such as those made in psychology (more specifically, folk psychology).
I see philosophers as adjudicators: they oversee development in all areas of life and ensure that no purported modifications hinder progress. Science would continue without philosophy, but I would predict in a less than satisfactory manner.
science and philosophy are symbiotic, but philosophy preceeds science and in such a way there can be no completion of science without a completeion of philosophy, although it is conceivable that there be a completion of philosophy without one of science…althouh such a case my reveal all subsequent sciencific truths in it’s completion…exponentially so to speek…
Curious why people have neglected the Kuhnian distinction between normal science and revolutionary science? Doesn’t philosophy work much the same way? I think the question for philosophy isn’t whether it is compatible with science but whether it should model itself after science or, say, after poetry. Is poetry compatible with science?
I’m sure everyone knows the joke that if everyone in the English department were killed, scientists could still take up the slack, but the reverse . . . . 
Could the same be said for the philosophy department?
Regardless of the department, I think it safe to say that philosophy (the manipulation of ideas)and poetry (the manipulation of words) will still be practiced, even by scientists, so one might argue that these practices are more necessary for being human than science itself: they create the conditions for revolutionary science if not normal science.
Anything less would mean that we would be stuck in one hell of a rut.
Or perhaps we should see all three, at root, as three sides of the same triangle: human creativty?
Philosophy = Unprovable theory
Science = Provable theory
Almost. Science, in order for it to be science, is falsifiable, not provable.
I used to argue that philosophy was a critique of common sense, a certain way of trying to look at things differently from a received or mainstream view. If this is a useful way to look at it (and it’s probably too vague to do much of anything), it’s provabilitly of falsifiability becomes moot.
thought i’d contribute a little
to me its like most things, that is a circle or feedback loop, philosophy is to think, science then developed from this thinking,
the feedback or circle is where science assists philosophical thinking.
science has changed our very world view, from it being flat to the knowledge of it not,
studies into who we are, are assisted by scientific knowledge of our brain / mind
consider how philosophers past used to explian how our actions came about
science has in many ways pushed philosophical thinking beyond what scientific evidence we have.
there are communicable,
in a sense one the same,
the only difference that there is in my opinion is that science sets out to prove facts, philosophy sets out to study said facts
one gives an explaination, the other an opinion, plausibilty.
I recently came across this observation (unfortunately, I can’t remember the source):
Science tells us that things we thought impossible are actually possible, while philosophy tells us that things we think possible are actually impossible. 
I prefer to think that science properly belongs in the department of philosophy. Science is a specialized philosophy that relies upon physical experiment for verification. If it were possible to employ physical experiments to verify all philosophical hypothesis, we wouldn’t hesitate to do so, in which case all philosophy would become science.
Clever scientists will continue to extend the boundaries of empirically verifiable knowledge. However, it will be a long time before an intelligent scientist can answer the questions of the most stupid philosopher. As men become more sophisticated, their questions, both scientific and philosophical, simply become more sophisticated. John Casti wrote:
“The point of a scientific theory is to reduce the arbitrariness of the data.”
The point of philosophy is to reduce the arbitrariness of everything, including the data. Both philosophy and science are fueled by our curiosity and limited by our reason.
“Science lives in the present and is always forgetting its first steps. Philosophy, to the contrary, is always trying to retrace its first steps and has been from the very beginning. What physicist rereads Newton? What philosopher does not reread Aristotle? Science progresses and forgets; philosophy ponders and recalls.” Andre Comte-Sponville, A Small Treatise on the Great Virtues
Michael
Polemarchus,
I’m thinking about starting a thread on Descarte’s Discourse on Method, although I feel weary about doing so since threads on philosophers actual philosophies don’t seem to be favorites here, so I thought it may still be worth doing so in order to debate with you on your view of the work. Have you read it?
If so, I will start a new thread tomorrow explaining my views.
Hey Magius,
It’s been a while, but yes, I’ve read it.
Michael
science and philosophy need eachother to exist
it’s not that long ago that science and philosophy were the same thing… they only seperated a few hundred years ago…
I am a bit (or a lot) of a reductionist. I think that there is ultimately physics but nothing else. philosophy in today’s sense is investigating things that science can’t quite understand, such as psychology, what the mind is made of. since psychology can be reduced to nurology, and then to dhcmistry then physics, and that as (just an example) the investigation of what the mind is, I believe, can eventually be solved by physical analysis of a person, everything is just physics in the end. so what I’m trying to say is that philosophy is an early stage of scitific investigation (people hypothesise when they don’t know how to investigate whether the hypothesis are true or not), after some time every hypothesis will be tested with physics so that all truths will be found.
yan