Some Suggestions on the Respective Spheres of Science and Philosophy

THE THOMIST A SPECULATIVE QUARTERLY REVIEW OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY EDITORs: THE DoMINICAN FATHERS oF THE PROVINCE oF ST. JosEPH Publishers: Sheed & Ward, Inc., New York City VoL. III APRIL, 1941 No.2 SOME SUGGESTIONS ON THE RESPECTIVE SPHERES OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY I. IN WHICH PHILOSOPHY IS DECLARED INDEPENDENT oF SciENCE W ITH the rise of modern science a new problem has arisen for philosophy. How is philosophy to be classified among the other forms of knowledge? To many of our contemporaries, of course, this is no problem at all; science is the only form of knowledge; therefore, there is no need to classify philosophy. Accordingly, what for the philosopher was originally a somewhat academic question of' classification has now become a vital question involving the very existence of philosophy itself. It is this vital question which we wish to consider in this paper, our-purpose being to show not only that philosophy is independent of science, but also in what sense it is independent. At the outset we might call attention to a distinction between science and philosophy which has behind it something of the authority of commonsense usage. The scientist, it is said, strives for knowledge; the philosopher, for wisdom. Indeed, it is almost a truism today that while we may know far more than the 177 178 HENRY B. VEATCH ancients, we are anything but far wiser than they. Our science has made great strides in the last several centuries. Has our philosophy progressed likewise? For all of its plausibility this mere commonsense distinction between wisdom and knowledge can hardly be regarded as adequate evidence of the independence of philosophy from science. After all, what is wisdom? It is surely knowledge of a kind. Just how is that kind of knowledge which is wisdom to be differentiated from that kind of knowledge which is science? Perhaps we can differentiate them by saying that philosophical knowledge is rational, while scientific knowledge is empirical. With the one are to be associated methods that are a priori and deductive; 'with the other, methods that are a posteriori and inductive. But this will not do. Philosophy simply is not to be identified with Rationalism. This may have been done in the seventeenth century, but since that time too much water has gone under the bridge for us ever to try to do it again. Besides, so far as science is concerned, it is no more exclusively empirical than philosophy is exclusively rational. To be sure, science is empirical. Yet for all its empiricism, science is not for that reason non-intellectual and non-rational. Quite the contrary, the old superstition is now dispelled which says that the task of the scientist is merely to observe with his senses. In fact, if there should be found a scientist who still insists that all he does is to observe, we might quickly silence him by asking if that means that what he never does is to think. No, mere sensory observation is inadequate and incomplete, for so long as sense data are given but not understood, real knowledge has not been attained. Accordingly, it is one of the most striking features of the history of science that empirical observation is always supplemented by attempts at intellectual explanation . Consider the classic example of Kepler. As a result of his own and others' empirical observations, he established the law that the planets move in elliptical orbits. Here was a fact; it was simply so, and empirical observations proved it. Yet physicists and astronomers were not content with it as such. They insisted upon having an explanation of it; they THE RESPECTIVE SPHERES OF SCIENCE AND PHILOSOPHY 179 wanted to know why planets should behave in this way. Aristotle's physics could give no accounting of it. As for Kepler himself he was hardly more successful, his suggestion being that there was an angel attached to each planet which guided the planet in its elliptical course. Indeed, it was not until Newton proposed his laws of motion that anything like a real explanation was forthcoming. In other words, it would seem that a scientist is not content with the mere empirical knowledge that a thing is...