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.
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