Philosophy and Its Contribution to the Progress of Science.

Have you ever wondered and question yourself: who am I? How do we know that we know? What is the purpose of life? What is time? And what is mind?.
If so, you've been asking philosophical questions. So, what is philosophy, and what exactly are philosophically questions?

Philosophy is the foundation of thinking, which helps us to explore the nature of reality, knowledge, and existence. 

But this is small part of philosophy, it is more than this and it has also deeply shaped the science (the way in which science works). From ancient thinkers like Aristotle to modern scientists like Einstein (not only Einstein but list is huge) has guided the science and encourage scientific thinking and ignites the curiosity to explore the existance. 

What Is Philosophy? 

The word Philosophy is came from the greek words "philos" which means love and "sophia" meaning wisdom. 

It is the pursuit of truth (Now, what is truth and how we define truth itself is a philosophical question) or it's about studying anything that can be studied. 

According to the standard definition, Philosophy is the study of fundamental questions (we discussed earlier), the nature of knowledge, mind, existence, ethics, morality, etc.

What Are Philosophical Question's?

Philosophical questions are those questions that ask fundamental (which is basic, essential and most important) questions underlying our beliefs, experiences, and the world itself which don't have any direct answer but debatable.

Now, we know what philosophy is and philosophical questions are.

Let's drive the branches of philosophy:

Imagine philosophy as a tree which has many branches (more than one), each branch has a specific question associated with it. 

Metaphysics (it studies what lies beyond the physical things), Epistemology (study of knowledge), Ethics (focuses on the value of moral actions and social behavior), Axiology (studies of value), Logic (It deals with reasoning and argumentation which is necessary to think clearly and how to reach a valid conclusion). These are few branches of philosophy.

What is Science?

Science is the systematic study of existence with proper experimentation, reasoning, logic, and only studies about physical things.

The standard definition of science is "the systematic study of the natural world and its physical and biological processes, through observation, identification, description, experimentation”. This definition covers all the essential steps which are followed by science.

Now, How philosophy is contributed to science.

Let start with my Instagram post:

“Imagine a country is a universe. In the universe, there is a king called "Science", Who describes the reality(country) through tools. But the King needs guidance through which he/she describes or explores reality. The guidance is given by "Philosophy". Such as: What is science? How should science work? What counts as evidence. etc.. "Empiricism" says that science should work in an empirical way - I mean, it should ask for evidence. And "Rationalism" helps science to think rationally or logically without biases.”

Philosophy can help science in the following ways:

1. Clarifying The Concepts And Assumptions.

Science uses many huge concepts such as space, time, matter and all that. BUT:

•What is time? How do we define time?

•What is space?

•What counts as evidence?

These questions are necessary to address them, but questions are not scientific themselves. They are philosophical in nature.

Philosophers analyze such ideas carefully and help science in a better or more systematic way.

2. Scientific Methods Itself Is Philosophical In Nature. 

Scientific methods such as Observation, Reasoning, Experimentation, and Hypothesis come from the philosophy of science. 

•What makes a theory scientific?

•When a theory is falsifiable?

         

There are some philosophies which guides the science in a systems manner such as:

Empiricism : It states that knowledge comes from experiences. We get knowledge from our biological senses such as the eye, ear , touch, and smell.

We learn by observing, experimenting, and experiencing the world. 

Example: When scientists see microbes or any microorganisms under a microscope, and draw conclusions based on what we see. This is empirical investigation or observation. 

Modern Science is strongly based on empiricism.

Rationalism: The main idea of Rationalism is “Knowledge comes from reason, not from senses”. We can gain knowledge by thinking, reasoning, and using logic, even without experience. 

Example: We can make a theory based on reason, 

logic, and thinking. 

BUT, Both are necessary in science — Empiricism tests the world, and Rationalism helps us to understand it.

3. Ethics in Science.

Science gives us power, but should we use it in every way?

In Biotechnology, we create so many things with the use of living things which has great impact on environment, humans, and social lifes.

Such as in gene cloning, Should we use gene cloning technique to clone humans?

And In clinical trials, should we use animals in clinical trials for the benefits of mankind.

These are the ethical questions, and ethics is the branch of philosophy. So philosophy helps science to stay responsible and use technologies in right way.

4. Framing Fundamental Questions. 

Many scientific discoveries starts with the philosophical questions like:

 • What is life?

 • What is consciousness?

 • What is time and space?

This questions hepls science to think in more deeper way or built a better understanding of physical universe. 

5. Trains thinkers. 

Because of its critical thinking, reasoning, clarity of thoughts helps individual to think in systematic way. Which helps science to think deeper and built an better picture of universe. 

Final Conclusion:

All the progress of science and technology is indirectly linked to philosophy. Which helps science to built technology, theory and hypothesis.

 In other words, Philosophy is the foundation of science in which science builds a theory. It shapes how we think, what we questions, how we interpret the answer.