we have in science, a thought that the pathway to knowledge in the universe
is by mathematics… science operates via math…now we know that math is
is the tool we mentioned earlier which by measuring something we
can learn things… this measuring is done by math…
and by comparing and contrasting the various things we have measured, we can
get some idea about the thing we are curious about…
we have measured dogs and by our various math skills have concluded
that certain dogs only grow to a certain height and other dogs can grow
another height, but we know that there are of course, exceptions to every rule
we create… we say, that the German Shepard can grow up to 4 feet tall but
we know of German Shepard’s that are taller because out of all our rules,
there are always exceptions… we say the average man is 5 foot 7 inches tall…
BTW, I am 5’7 tall… but that is the average height… I am much taller then
my brother and my stepfather was much taller then me… a good deal of
science is really just saying things are roughly this dimension and this dimension,
in some form of measurement…Stars are this big and the average star in the
universe seems to be a brown dwarf, so we have a range of dimensions in everything
from galaxies to ants… everything has not a set in stone size, but a rough average size…
now can we take any of this and apply it to philosophy?
we can say, the average philosopher seems to have written
about knowledge and we can measure the amount of words a
philosopher has written about knowledge and compare and contrast
it to other philosophers… clearly some philosophers are much more concerned
about knowledge then other philosophers…and by measured the amount
of times they write about knowledge, we can get a sense of how concerned or
not concerned about knowledge they were…we know for example, Descartes
was very concerned about knowledge and wrote a great deal about knowledge
and someone like Camus was not that concerned about knowledge and we can
measured the differences between the two by how much they wrote about
knowledge… but can we discover a means to discern not how much about
knowledge they wrote but about their understanding about knowledge?
how do we judge Descartes understanding about knowledge?
how do we measure Descartes understanding about knowledge?
Does his understanding of knowledge have any value? is it worth reading
and how would you judge or know that? you would have to take the word
of someone else… for example, your philosophy professor says that, Descartes
is the greatest philosopher of all time… and you must read him to understand
philosophy…and I will quiz you on your understanding of Descartes understanding
of knowledge…so, to get a good grade, you “study” Descartes… but
would you use the scientific method of measuring him or would you use
the philosophical method? Wait a minute, there is a philosophical method?
you didn’t say that… so what is the philosophical method? and what is the
scientific method?
Kropotkin