WHY PHILOSOPHY IS THE BOSS

I was relating with a friend on the difference between appearance & reality, on belief & knowledge when another friend, who obviously science walked in to disrupt our conversation. he asked, “what is it you are saying about Philosophy? What is Philosophy? Is it not that you people based your thinking and lives on the old theories and populations of ancient and medieval Philosophers, like Socrates and Aristotle?" this made me laugh.  I tried to ask him questions, instead of answering, he ran way. This is why I decided to give it back to him and some others in his shoe through this article, ‘WHY PHILOSOPHY IS THE BOSS’.

To start with, the gauge of the value of philosophy as a world-view and methodology is the degree to which it is interconnected with life. This interconnection may be both direct and indirect, through the whole system of culture, science, art, morality, religion, law, and politics. As a special form of social consciousness, constantly interacting with all its other forms, philosophy is the general theoretical evidence and interpretation. Some people think that the sciences can stand outside philosophy, that the scientist should actually avoid philosophizing. The latter often being understood as groundless and generally vague in theory. If the term philosophy is given such poor interpretation, then of course anyone would agree with the warning "Physics, beware of metaphysics!" But no such warning applies to philosophy in the higher sense of the term. The specific sciences cannot and should not break their connections with true philosophy. It must be known to those who don’t know that the idea of the atomic structure of things was first postulated by Democritus, a Philosopher, before the scientists even saw it. Certain conjectures about natural selection were made in ancient times by the philosopher Lucretius and later by the French thinker Diderot.

Hypothetically he anticipated what a scientific fact became two centuries later. We may also recall the Cartesian reflex and the philosopher's proposition on the conservation of motion in the universe. On the general philosophical plane Spinoza gave grounds for the universal principle of determinism. The idea of the existence of molecules as complex particles consisting of atoms was developed in the works of the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi and also Russia's Mikhail Lomonosov. Philosophy nurtured the hypothesis of the cellular structure of animal and vegetable organisms and formulated the idea of the development and universal connection of phenomena and the principle of the material unity of the world. Lenin formulated one of the fundamental ideas of contemporary natural science—the principle of the inexhaustibly of matter—upon which scientists rely as a firm methodological foundation.

The latest theories of the unity of matter, motion, space and time, the unity of the discontinuous and continuous, the principles of the conservation of matter and motion, the ideas of the infinity and inexhaustibly of matter were stated in a general form in philosophy. The achievements of the specialized sciences are summed up in philosophical statements. Euclidean geometry, the mechanics of Galileo and Newton, which have influenced men's minds for centuries, were great achievements of human reason which played 'a significant role in forming world-views and methodology. And what an intellectual revolution was produced by Copernicus' heliocentric system, which changed the whole conception of the structure of the universe, or by Darwin's theory of evolution, which had a profound impact on biological science in general and our whole conception of man's place in nature.

If we trace the whole history of natural and social science, we cannot fail to notice that scientists in their specific researches, in constructing hypotheses and theories have constantly applied, sometimes unconsciously, world-views and methodological principles, categories and logical systems evolved by philosophers and absorbed by scientists in the process of their training and self-education. All scientists who think in terms of theory constantly speak of this with a deep feeling of gratitude both in their works and at regional and international conferences and congresses.

Some people think that science has reached such a level of theoretical thought that it no longer needs philosophy. But any scientist, particularly the theoretician, knows in his heart that his creative activity is closely linked with philosophy and that without serious knowledge of philosophical culture the results of that activity cannot become theoretically effective. All the outstanding theoreticians have themselves been guided by philosophical thought and tried to inspire their pupils with its beneficent influence in order to make them specialists capable of comprehensively and critically analyzing all the principles and systems known to science.

To round it off, the etymological meaning of Philosophy –Philo; Love and Sophia meaning wisdom or knowledge gives Philosophy the boss position over every other discipline. Whatever you are doing today, if you refuse to make use of Philosophical tool such as critical thinking and logic, you are just wasting your time and energy.

More importantly, no scientist can attain the peak of his/her academic career without passing through Philosophy, in the name of PhD i.e. Doctor of Philosophy. Philosophy is the Alfa and the Omega of every body of knowledge.