At the beginning
there was no difference between science and philosophy, because both had the
same motive. They tried to understand the world with reason. In fact, the first
philosophers were also what we would now call scientists.
For example,
Tales de Miletus predicted an eclipse, and Pythagoras is also very well known
for his theorem. As Aristotle said, the difference between science and
philosophy was only because
of the part of the world they studied. He meant that philosophy was a general study of the
most fundamental things. For example, biology studies a certain part of
reality, such as
flowers and plants. Medicine also studies a certain part, namely the human body.
But we can also ask, what makes something exist? What do all beings have in common?
Philosophy tried to
answer these questions.
So in fact there
wasn’t a big difference between science and philosophy, or in the way they worked (both
used reason). The only difference was what they studied: science, a specific
part of the reality, and philosophy, reality in general.
This situation
continued until the 16th century. What happened then? We now say
that during this century the first scientific revolution started. Scientists
began to use experimentation and observation to make their conclusions, and
that caused a lot
of success and
discoveries. For example, we can mention Galileo, who was the inventor of the
first telescope, and confirmed that the earth wasn’t the centre of the
universe.
However,
philosophy couldn’t employ the same methods. There are a lot of questions that
can’t be observed or investigated with experimentation. Nor can we use mathematics to demonstrate
our theory. For example, if we ask what a good life is, or what the meaning of
life is, what kind of experimentation could we do? The only things we have are theories,
and we can have different points
of view. There is no way to definitively say who is right and who is
wrong. On the other hand, scientists have a way to end a discussion. They
experiment and demonstrate, and the argument is finished – everyone can have the
same point of view.
Ortega y Gasset
(one of the most famous Spanish philosophers) talked about this difference. He
said that science is exact and penultimate, and philosophy is inexact and ultimate.
Now it’s your turn: can you
try to find out
what Ortega wanted to say with this idea?
