Stephen Hawking famously said that "Philosophy is dead." What do you think? Does philosophy still inform science, or hinder it?
Hawking and Einstein are morons next to Aristotle.
According to Bertrand Russell Aristotle said that women have more teeth than men. Although Aristotle was married twice it seems it never occurred to him to look into the mouth of either of his two wives.
It seems that the basis of your knowedge is "belief," whereas a simple research would dispel the need for "belief" as the basis of knowledge.
Cynthia Freeland wrote: "Aristotle says that the courage of a man lies in commanding, a woman's lies in obeying; that 'matter yearns for form, as the female for the male and the ugly for the beautiful'; that women have fewer teeth than men; that a female is an incomplete male or 'as it were, a deformity'."[3
@AtheistReader I call bullshit - Aristotle was one of the brightest men ever. He was a scientist and a philosopher - clearing this up would be simple.
@gater
You mean the same Aristotle who claimed that playing the flute would turn young men gay and make young women promiscuous?
Politics – Book VIII
Or that gold falls faster than lead?
Or that spiders had six legs and were to be classified as insects?
Or Men have more teeth than women.
Or Men's blood is hotter than women's blood.
Or that some people are naturally born to be slaves, and it is just and moral to enslave them.
Or the earth is the center of the universe.
Or that the earth is and has been there for all eternity.
Or all less formers of life spontaneously come into being and don't reproduce.
Or the natural state for all objects is to be at rest; they require constant application of force to move.
Or that there are a total of seven heavenly bodies, which are perfect and never change.
Or that the heart is the organ of reason and intellect.
But this can all be explained since he honestly believed the sole function of the brain is to cool the blood.
Yes he was a real fucking genius.
@LenHazell53 Aristotle claimed the Universe is infinite - which it is. Einstein and Hawking never made this claim. Einstein did not understand space, time, or gravity, he was more a science fiction theorist.
@gater NO he did not, Aristotle claimed the universe was made up of 53 concentric circles orbiting a stationary earth and that the earth was eternal not infinite.
And you really think the the author of the general theory of relativity did not understand gravity?
Read a book.
@LenHazell53 Aristotle claimed the Universe is "borderless" - meaning it goes on forever - its infinite.
Einstein thought gravity effects time - it doesn't. He didn't understand either.
Use your brain.
@gater I do, you need not further prove that you don't, you have adequately proven yourself an ignoramus since you know nothing of time dilation, Aristotle or Einstein
@LenHazell53 Time dilation has nothing to do with time. Time dilation is the effect gravity has on matter, as in a GPS device.
@gater yeah whatever you say diddums
@LenHazell53 Maybe you should read a book about Time Dilation, since you brought it up you should learn something about it.
Philosophy is not a science, to try to look at it as if it was science will generate mistakes.
Philosophy is what generates the method and science is the method, so Science is a child of Philosophy.
For example, nothing guarantees that the universe can be translated in mathematic equations, but at the same time we can deal with the concept of never achieving the truth, but getting close enough (and closer).
Anyway you still see in society many discussions that were already started ages ago like utilitarism versus deontology, or falascious arguments that can be busted easily by minimum logic knowledge.
It is difficult for non philosophers to gasp the state of the modern discussions, because they are there for thousands of years. The same way that if you try to explain quantum mechanics using the intuitive Newtonian physics will generate mistakes and problems that modern science already solved (but are not that intuitive). People think that citing a greek guy that lived 2500 years ago can end a discussion because his argument sounds intuitively logic. And they forget that there is 2500 years of arguments and logic building up over it and cannot be dismissed.
Most "dilemas" in modern society have already extensive bodies and treaties over it and what general public understand is the first 2 or 3 layers of those centuries of philosophers.
Same way as Darwin's works have a lot of errors, but the main idea was correct and the evolution as written by Darwin was corrected, expanded in a way that using his book to study it is just an introduction.
If science is about how everything happens, it's great. If it's about why, the meaning of life etc., it has nothing to offer and has left many people cold. Granted, many people feel there is no meaning, no why, but many others sense more is going on than meets the eye, or scientific inquiry, to put it another way.
We can’t take a single statement out of context and say for definite that he believed that across the board, This is the problem with picking and choosing quotes made by famous people ...without context they are sometimes misleading or even meaningless. Personally I believe that philosophy and science can still inform us, they are not mutually exclusive, nor are they contradictory.
Philosophy is recreational. Science can be backed up by facts.
A great show on NetFlix titled "Particle Fever"
I'd really like to watch that!
@Organist1 I found it here
I studied Physics in school and was profoundly interested in this field. Alas, didn't work out but I did get to earn a degree in applied electronics. A local and very close friend is a physicists and he and I often get into discussion on some aspects of the science.
@JackPedigo Thanks. I'm watching it now; it's fascinating.
In the past a lot of philosophy was concerned with the business of describing how the material world worked, as was religion. In those roles, certainly one philosophy, natural philosophy, which we now call science, superseded all the others, when it developed the scientific method, which set a higher and more objective standard of truth. But that still leaves huge areas, especially morality, in which the scientific method can not be used. Philosophy therefore is still very much needed.
Although it could be said that most of what needs to be stated, on subjects like morality, was said in the past by early philosophers and that therefore it is to a large degree, a done work. It also should be said that since the scientific method sets a higher standard of objective truth, then it is an obligation on the other philosophies to work within the discoveries of science.
I don't agree that morality is a closed case.
Situations change, modern technology gave us capacities that are compared to a force of nature.
Even the development of modern nation states is pretty recent (3 or 4 centuries if you extend to the limit of Westphalia peace).
Artificial intelligence, fake news, environment collapse, mass migration, war capacity of even "small nations". All this creates scenarios never imagined before and thus even if old morality imperatives are used, sometimes it generates very unpleasant results.
Imagine the prince of Maquiavel with access to an army of drones with absolute loyal artificial intelligence, this changes the concept of ruler and state as the population cannot beat the ruler due to numbers, as drones can be "produced" faster than people and are more efficient.
What are the implications of this kind of scenario.
I think Philosophy was the name of his electric wheelchair - maybe the battery was low.
Philosophy is akin to dreaming. Science is all about bringing dreams to reality.
Einstein said: "imagination is more important than knowledge." That being the case then imagination is more akin to dreaming...
Speaking to Google’s Zeitgeist Conference in Hertfordshire, the author of 'A Brief History of Time' said that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe could not be resolved without hard data such as that currently being derived from the Large Hadron Collider and space research. “Most of us don't worry about these questions most of the time. But almost all of us must sometimes wonder: Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead,” he said. “Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.”
Prof Hawking went on to claim that “Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.” He said new theories “lead us to a new and very different picture of the universe and our place in it”.
I think he has a point. In that context, I agree with that statement. This shouldn't be taken out of context, as "philosophy" is a vague and vast concept.
Science is exploring the world that is, engineering is creating the world that never was. Philosophy is tourism.
IMO most philosophy is a complete waste of time. Why not debate how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, a hot topic in the Middle Ages, and actually leading to severe persecution of the "losing" side of the debate! (blasphemy!)
That was theology not philosophy
@LenHazell53 no, theythought of it as philosophy, as everything was religion-basedbackthen.
@AnneWimsey The most famous version of this comes from Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica, written c. 1270.
A theology text book.
Duns Scotus used it in a reductio ad absurdum in order to point out how ridiculous theology as a subject is and survives mostly in this context, as a joke or example of navel gazing. It has never been a philosophical contention or question.
@LenHazell53 name any textbooks in use, or even in print, that did Not have a religious base at the time. Plus people got excommunicated and/or accused of blasphemy over crap like this. Serious charges in that day! Using "thought" as a weapon!
Hawking himself must have engaged in metaphysical speculation in connection with his scientific endeavors.
No, philosophy is not dead.
James Clerk Maxwell:
“It has been asserted that metaphysical speculation is a thing of the past, and that physical science has extirpated it. The discussion of the categories of existence, however, does not appear to be in danger of coming to an end in our time, and the exercise of speculation continues as fascinating to every fresh mind as it was in the days of Thales.”
Philosophy has nothing to do with Science..
Listened to ‘Philosophy Talk’ on NPR for years … those guys got nowhere … what a waste of time! Sure, it deals with ethics, morals ..and endless human nuances, but ‘proves’ nothing.
@OldMetalHead To get permission for any kind of experimentation on humans or animals the method of the trial must be submitted to an ethics committee before it can be funded and permitted.
He was such a silly man in many respects, in actuality philosophy is very much alive where as he on the other hand . . . . . . . . .hmmmmm
The Greeks found them complementary bed fellows and there is no reason that I have seen to the contrary. Given the Enlightenment, The Age Of Reason, stood back, the scientific method still requires someone to say “What happens if...?”
As soon as we compartmentalise ideologies we lose so many opportunities by elitist thinking. Not the best way forward I would suggested
Must have been a gigantic bed! ...including Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, Demeter, Athena, Apollo, Artemis, Ares, Aphrodite, Hephaestus, Hermes, and either Hestia or Dionysus ~
Ludwig Wittgenstein once proclaimed the death of philosophy and then spent the rest of his life philosophizing. He was really referring to the death of systemic philosophy as he claimed to have "solved" all important questions generally accepted in the world of philosophy. Of course, not all philosophers agree with Wittgenstein.
Hawking appears to be claiming something similar but from a scientific viewpoint, claiming that fundamental questions about the nature of the universe can not be resolved without hard data such as that currently being derived from the Large Hadron Collider and space research. So, he had no use for philosophy as a discipline, as he also said, “Philosophers have not kept up with modern developments in science. Particularly physics.” He had a point, though Daniel Dermont may be an exception, at least to an extent. Nevertheless, this does not mean that philosophizing is dead. Also, not all of philosophy deals with the nature of the Universe.
Empiricism is a Phenomenology. Know more at: [FoolQuest.com]
Hawking said that philosophy is dead, Hawking is dead and philosophy is alive. Of course, some scientists are philosophers. One would have thought that scientists would be the first ones to step forward and challenge any belief system or practice that has donned the mantle of science. See Richard Lewontin (The Doctrine of DNA) Thomas Szasz ( The Myth of Mental Illness, The Manufacture of Madness, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry) to name but three of his works.
Hawking was speaking in the context of a search for physical truth and explanation at the Google's Zeitgeist conference
scientists rather than philosophers have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge
He said adding that in this sense ‘philosophy is dead’
That is not to say that there are a few areas where philosophy in the classical sense is still of use, metaphysics, ethics and a couple of others. especially critical thinking and logic.
When/where did Stephen Hawking said that? Any reference please?
Good question.
In his book, "The Grand Design" and also his talk on "Why are we here?"
@DallasKimmerzzz I will look it up, I read the Grand Design a while ago. I don't remember that quote, but also I can't remember what did I have for lunch yesterday. Thanks.
Essential to philosophical enquiry is freedom of speech and the right to question beliefs in whatever form they take regardless of who endorsed them. We know that up until the Age of Enlightenment the state endorsed the views of the Catholic Church. Those who questioned the 'authority' of the Catholic Church were usually tortured and put to death.
I wonder to what extent scientism has replaced religion as a place of refuge in modern societies...…….
Cosmology, a form of scientism, has joined religion. Its main god was Georges LeMaitre. His fraudulent use of mathematics and taxpayer funding have attracted numerous demigods. They have produced tons of dogma and are producing more. For info, visit www.newtoeu.com and download the free PDF.
Philosophy enhances thought. Unless a board of philosophers hold the purse strings to funding scientific endeavors, it has no other influence.
In recent times, there's great free philosophy lectures on YT. Some of those lecturers have had a wide influence.