Category Archives: Philosophy

Philosophy, Science

Philosophy and Science

REASONING

Einstein

THROUGHOUT much of the history of philosophy, there was no such thing as science in its modern form: in fact, it was from philosophical enquiry that modern science has evolved. The questions that metaphysics set out to answer about the structure and substance of the universe prompted theories that later became the foundations of natural philosophy, the precursor of what we now call physics. The process of rational argument, meanwhile, underpins the ‘scientific method’.

. Previously (Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche

Since the 18th century, many of the original questions of metaphysics have been answered by observation, experiment and measurement, and philosophy appeared to be redundant in these areas. Philosophers have since changed their focus to examine science itself. Some, like Hume, challenged the validity of inductive reasoning (empiricism) in science, while others sought to clarify the meaning of terms used by science, opening up a ‘philosophy of science’ that considers areas such as scientific ethics and the way science makes progress.

Logic

In seeking answers to questions about the universe and our place in it, philosophy is distinguished from religion or mere convention by its use of reasoning. Philosophy proposes ideas because of thought with the assertions justified with sound rational argument. Convention or mere belief is not enough. Various logical techniques have been devised to show whether an argument is valid or fallacious.

In simple terms, logic is the process of inferring a conclusion from statements known as premises, either deriving a general principle from specific examples (inductive reasoning) or reaching a conclusion from general statements (deductive reasoning). The classical form of logical argument, the syllogism, consisting of two premises and a conclusion, was officially formalised by Aristotle and has remained the mainstay of philosophical logic until advances in mathematical logic brought in new ideas in the 19th century. Later, in the 20th century, symbolic logic opened new fields still further within philosophy.

Metaphysics

For the first philosophers, the burning question was: ‘What is everything made of?’ At its most basic, this is the central question of a branch of philosophy known as metaphysics. Many of the theories proposed by the ancient Greek philosophers – the notions of elements, atoms, and so on – formed the basis of modern science, which has since provided evidence-based explanations for these fundamental questions.

Metaphysics, however, has evolved into a field of enquiry beyond the realms of science: as well as dealing with the make-up of the cosmos, it examines the nature of what exists, including such ideas as the properties of material things, the difference between mind and matter, cause and effect, and the nature of existence, being and reality (ontology).

Although some philosophers have challenged the validity of metaphysics in the face of scientific discovery, recent developments in areas such as quantum mechanics have renewed interest in metaphysical theories.

. See also Philosophy: An introduction…
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Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Friedrich Nietzsche

1844 – 1900

The work of Friedrich Nietzsche, a German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar has exerted a profound influence on Western philosophy and modern intellectual history.

One of the most profound, enigmatic and ultimately controversial philosophers in the whole of the Western canon, Nietzsche’s work has been variously appropriated, vilified, venerated or simply misunderstood. Through the relationship of his sister, Elisabeth, with the national socialists in Germany, Nietzsche’s philosophy has wrongly gained the reputation of supporting Nazism, though his concept of the  Übermensch or ‘superman’, is in fact closer to Aristotle’s man of virtue than the glorified Aryan hero. Elisabeth’s edited and altered collection of Nietzsche’s writings, published shortly after his death as The Will to Power, has done much to mar the reception of Nietzsche’s thought in the twentieth century. As a result, it may be another hundred years before his philosophy is widely appreciated for the genius that it is. Freud said of Nietzsche that ‘he had a more penetrating knowledge of himself than any other man who ever lived or was ever likely to live’.

Son of a Protestant clergyman, Nietzsche gained a professorship at the University of Basel at the remarkable age of only twenty-four. After ten years, ill health forced him to retire into a solitudinous but vagrant lifestyle across Europe, whence he devoted himself to writing and recuperation. He eventually received worldwide fame during the last decade or so of his life. Of this he was probably unaware, since, in 1889, Nietzsche suffered a final and irreversible breakdown and remained insane until his death.

Nietzsche’s writings are varied and cover diverse topics, from ethics and religion to metaphysics and epistemology (study of the source, nature, and limitations of knowledge). He is most renowned, however, for his concept of ‘the will to power’. Influenced by Schopenhauer to a certain extent, albeit without so much metaphysical baggage, Nietzsche saw the fundamental driving force of the individual as expressed in the need to dominate and control the external forces operating upon him. As such, Nietzsche’s individual requires what the existentialists would later give him, the power to be master of his own destiny.

The frustration of this urge is responsible for the existence of various moral systems and religious institutions, all of which attempt to bind and subdue the will. Perhaps because of his father’s influence, Nietzsche was particularly hostile to Christianity, which he famously once described as being a ‘slave morality’. In it he saw the resentment of the weak towards the strong. Those who failed to have the courage to master their own passions, who lacked, ultimately, inner strength of character, sought revenge on those stronger than themselves, not in this life, but in a fictional ‘other’ world, where some other power, namely God, would wreak vengeance on their behalf.

Unlike Schopenhauer, Nietzsche did not see the will to power as something to be resisted, but pursued and affirmed. It is, Nietzsche insists, the exuberance of spring, the affirmation of life, the saying of ‘Yes!’ However, as already outlined, Nietzsche did not advocate the dominance of the strong over the weak, nor suggest that mastery of the will to power belonged to some special elite by virtue of birth. Rather he described, historically, how the domination of the strong results in, and is necessary to, what we would now call, the ‘evolutionary progress’ of the human being. But strength, as Nietzsche understands it, is not constituted in physical, but rather psychical, force. The strong are those who are more complete, as human beings, who have learnt to sublimate and control their passions, to channel the will to power into a creative force.

Neither, contrary to popular misunderstanding, did Nietzsche endorse the ‘master morality’ – moral systems peculiar to the aristocracy – although it is true he thought it more life affirming than ‘slave morality’, which he insists is typified within Christianity. Rather, Nietzsche held that the strong had a duty towards the less fortunate: ‘The man of virtue, too, helps the unfortunate, but not, or almost not, out of pity, but prompted by an urge which is begotten by the excess of power’.

. Previously (Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Plato

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Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy) Essential Thinkers: Plato

c.427 – 347BC

Plato seeks to understand and discover the ideal form of society. This is propagated through his concept of The Republic. But this notion has had scholars divided.

STUDENT of Socrates and founder of the Academy, the first reported institution of higher education – no philosopher has had a greater or wider-ranging influence in the history of philosophy than Plato. Alfred North Whitehead once said, with much justification, that the safest characterisation of Western philosophy is that of a series of footnotes to Plato. There is no topic of philosophical concern for which one cannot find some view in the corpus of his work.

Accordingly, it can be difficult to characterise such a vast and comprehensive canon of thought. However, much of Plato’s work revolves around his conception of a realm of ideal forms. The world of experience is illusory, Plato tells us, since only that which is unchanging and eternal is real, an idea he borrowed from Parmenides. There must, then, Plato asserts, be a realm of eternal unchanging forms that are the blueprints of the ephemeral phenomena we encounter through sense experience.

. More Quantum Leaps: Plato

According to Plato, though there are many individual horses, cats and dogs, they are all made in the image of the one universal form of ‘the horse’, ‘the cat’, ‘the dog’ and so on. Likewise, just as there as many men, all men are made in the image of the universal ‘form of man’. The influence of this idea on later Christian thought, in which man is made in the image of God, is only one of many ways in which Plato had a direct influence on Christian theology.

Plato’s Theory of Forms, however, was not restricted to material objects. He also thought there were ideal forms of universal or abstract concepts, such as beauty, justice, truth and mathematical concepts such as number and class. Indeed, it is in mathematics that Plato’s influence is still felt strongly today, both Frege and Gödel endorsing Platonism in this respect.

The Theory of Forms also underlies Plato’s most contentious and best-known work, The Republic. In a quest to understand the nature and value of justice, Plato offers a vision of a utopian society led by an elite class of guardians who are trained from birth for the task of ruling. The rest of society is divided into soldiers and the common people. In the republic, the ideal citizen is one who understands how best they can use their talents to the benefit of the whole of society, and bends unerringly to that task.

There is little thought of personal freedom or individual rights in Plato’s republic, for everything is tightly controlled by the guardians for the good of the state as a whole. This has led some, notably Bertrand Russell, to accuse Plato of endorsing an elitist and totalitarian regime under the guise of communist or socialist principles. Whether Russell and others who level this criticism are right or not is itself a subject of great philosophical debate. But it is important to understand Plato’s reasons for organising society in this way.

The Republic is an attempt, in line with his theory of forms, to discover the ideal form of society. Plato thinks there must be one ideal way to organise society, of which all actual societies are mere imperfect copies, since they do not promote the good of all. Such a society, Plato believes, would be stronger than its neighbours and unconquerable by its enemies, a thought very much in Greek minds given the frequent warring between Athens, Sparta and the other Hellenistic city-states. But more importantly, such a society would be just to all its citizens, giving and taking from each that which is their due, with each working for the benefit of the whole. Whether Plato’s republic is an ideal, or even viable society, has had scholars divided ever since.

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