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What is the relationship between philosophy and science?

People commonly assert that science proves that the traditional claims of philosophy are wrong. For example, they'll say that quantum mechanics proves that objective reality and causality are just myths and that psychology experiments disprove free will. In contrast, other people claim that philosophy is so fundamental that if any claims of science contradict philosophical principles, then the science must be discarded as false. Hence, for example, they say that homosexuality cannot possibly be be genetic, whatever science says, since philosophy tells us that people are born "tabula rasa," including without any knowledge of "male" versus "female." So what is the proper view of the relationship between philosophy and the sciences? Does either have a veto power over the other? Is science based on philosophy or vice versa?

Anonymous , 08.12.2012, 17:18
Idea status: completed

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James, 04.11.2013, 07:45
I'm a professional scientist, and I've found this to be one of the greatest absurdities ever presented in the name of logic. Science is three things to its practitioners: 1) it is a system of knowledge, a vast and ever-increasing library of facts and interpretations. 2) It is a culture, a community or series of communities that interact in specific ways. 3) It is a process specifically designed to achieve greater understanding of the natural world.

This third is the most important. Science is a verb--it's a process, specifically directed at identification of facts and integration of those facts into theories. A process of identification and integration is a process of epistemology--which is a subset of philosophy. Properly viewed, science is applied epistemology.

From a taxonomic perspective, the notion of science and philosophy being at odds is nonsense. You cannot become so good at a process that you step outside of it by doing it, any more than you can evolve out of your ancestry! Scientists know this, or at least should--it's not exactly hard to come across scientists arguing exactly this--but it doesn't fit with their world-view so they ignore these basic facts.

It's not just me saying this, either. While most sciences avoid directly discussing philosophy, paleontology always has embraced the necessity to ground our arguments in philosophy. Papers discussing how we can learn from the fossil record frequently directly cite philosophical work (if you'd like, Dr. Hsieh, I can send you a copy of one such paper as evidence).
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