On 09/02/2008, Ron Provost <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > The division between philosophy and science can be fine indeed. Philosophy > and science are the two rigorous methods of inquiry into the fundamental > nature of things (other methods include religion and superstition). Because > of it's process, science limits itself to those questions which can be > tested expermientally. Philosophy is left to address the remaining > questions which can be examined through reason (mostly deduction). Of many > of the questions which were thought to be only answerably via philosophy, > often someone finds a way to test some of them. This is very often the case > in areas of philosophy studying the fields involving the mind and nature. > Thus whold chunks of philosophy slowly become the realms of psychology, > lingustics, logic (Which as a whole became the realm of the theoretical > science of math around), and many of the questions about the nature of the > universe, existance and time have become the realm of physics. In this way > philosophy may be thought of as the cutting edge of science. > > Similarly science itself has uncovered new questions which currently can > only be addressed through the methods of philosophy. One of the most > interested and recently practical have been investigations into the > foundations of science. For example, Karl Popper was interested in the > process of science and what constitutes a scientific theory vs. > non-scientific theory. His answer: A scientific theory is falsifyable via > the techniques of science (that is experimentation). This is practical > today, because it excludes the whole "intelligent design" theory from > science, little if any of which is falsifyable. > > Thus the line that divides philosophy and science is fine. The two > disciplies in fact need oneanother. Science uncovers new information used > by philosophy to build new philosophical theories while philosophy spends a > huge amount of time questioning or judging the practices of other fields > such as science in much the same way as the US supreme court is supposed to > work to check on the other branches of the government.
+5 Informative Dotan Cohen http://what-is-what.com http://gibberish.co.il א-ב-ג-ד-ה-ו-ז-ח-ט-י-ך-כ-ל-ם-מ-ן-נ-ס-ע-ף-פ-ץ-צ-ק-ר-ש-ת A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing? -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
