Philosophy and Science
As a flow, people tend to think rationally and logically. Furthermore, some people do not believe anything that cannot be proved. They believe the science is a study of reason and logic whereas philosophy is a study of abstract and metaphysical ideas.
However this kind of prejudice is an act of overlooking the true meaning of philosophy. Philosophy has never been an abstract matter. If we take a closer look into the origin of the word ‘Philosophy’, we can easily find out that the word means ‘love for searching wisdom’, ‘phil-’ meaning love and ‘sophi-’ meaning wisdom.
To reach the wisdom, philosophers strived to prove the existence of things in a very scientific way. Socrates, known as a notable Philosopher in the Greek era, tried his best to find out the answers to his questions by using a dialectic way against sophists who tried to attain their needs by just connecting facts that have no relationship between each other.
Classifying a fact into three parts -right, wrong, and synthesis- and then pursuing the truth by developing the idea from the parts is how logically they have proved their answers. Furthermore, science and philosophy affect different parts in our lives. Science nor Philosophy can be the ends of the other, since their objects of the study are different.
But science and philosophy coexist and counter cooperate to develop each other. As most of us know, science is the study of facts. It questions ‘Why does this exist?’ and its main role is only to find the answer to the question. Science concerns about its practically to our lives. On the other hand, philosophy is a study of something surpassing just the happenings of our lives.
It doubt about the reason for an existence of som ething. So they ask questions such as ‘Why does it exist in this manner?’ Moreover, science does not give us any value of knowledge itself. Being very neutral this cannot decide any moral virtue of value. It is not science but philosophy gives us a direction to choose things with a better value.
It decides what is moral or what is proper. It is true that we cannot do anything without a full appreciation of a thing’s real value. If so, we have to bring philosophy into the range of sciece. However, it is also true that we cannot value anything if we do not have anything to value. Although they pursue different objective, they help the progress of our society by cooperating.
For instance, Darwin’s research on the origin of Freud’s mental analysis would not exist if there was no philosophy and Einstein’s theory of relativity would not exists if there was no science. Philosophy shows the direction to the science and value science’s quality. Therefore science is capable of finding its way in this world full of things that cannot be solved by only scientific technology itself.
Science also offers the basis for a more sophisticated philosophy so that the philosophy can develop in various parts which it was hard to access before. The present world requires more science than ever. Therefore a bunch of philosophy is also required accordingly. Under this coexistence of science and philosophy, it is reasonable for us to expect further a true progress of our society.
This essay won the first place of English essay category of the 25th UOS Culture Award.
Jung Dae-gyo Junior Reporter
hotpower7@uos.ac.kr