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Sitaram
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Joined: 14 Sep 2005
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 Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 11:27 am Post subject: Is Philosophy an Art or a Science? |
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Here is a link which asks whether Philosophy is an art or a science.
http://www.literatureforums.net/vb3/showthread.php?t=2767
Here is my reply, posted to the thread:
Early in Plato’s Republic, Socrates states that “Philosophy is a preparation
for death.”
Before we can say whether Philosophy is a science or an art, we must
spend some time defining what we mean by the words “science” and “art”.
The question presumes that Philosophy must be one or the other. It is
possible that Philosophy is neither.
How does science differ from art?
One hallmark of science is that results are objective and repeatable.
One hallmark of art is that it is subjective and unique.
http://www.icoste.org/news0404.htm
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So what is the difference between science and art? Science is governed
by unchangeable rules. This is why we can give the same mathematical
equation to ten people educated in the science of mathematics and arrive
at the same answer each and every time. Art, on the other hand, is a
learned skill derived from experience and, as such, is full of human
judgement. Give the same artistic problem to ten people and it is entirely
possible you’ll get back ten different answers, all of which are more or
less appropriate under the circumstances.
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Historically, philosophers and philosophy appear earlier than scientists and
science.
Art in the sense of painting and song or verse appears earlier than
philosophy or science.
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agexed/aee501/moore2.html
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The first truths sought or philosophical questions raised by people had to
do with the meaning and purpose of existence. The Egyptians wondered if
there was life in the hereafter. Thales, the first Greek philosopher,
pondered about what the substance of life was (he concluded it was
water). As we began to search for answers to questions about existence,
the questions became more concrete. What causes toothaches? Why does
it frost? Questions dealing with naturally occurring phenomena were
classified as "natural philosophy." Natural philosophy has evolved into
what we call science.
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http://denisdutton.com/moscow_address.htm
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The first line is most famously represented by Plato, whose respect for
the power of art was so great that he thought it would have to be
rigorously censored and controlled in his ideal republic. For Plato, as for
the Greeks generally, art was mimesis, an imitation or representation
of reality. As artists were apt to get their representations of reality
wrong, art was not only in danger of spreading ignorance and
misinformation, but of weakening the very fabric of society. Plato did not
ban all art from the republic — painting and sculpture, if we read carefully,
are not generally excluded. His main targets were the narrative arts of
poetry and drama, which were to be admitted to the republic only in
censored form, as “hymns to the gods and praises of noble
people”(607a).
science, with progress as one of its primary goals, seeks
understanding through objective methods (even though it rarely attains
it). The arts seek provocation of emotion and reflection through subjective
means. The more subjective the endeavor, the more personal it
becomes, and therefore difficult if not impossible for anyone else to
replicate. The more objective the pursuit, the more likely someone else
would have made the achievement. Darwin’s theory of natural selection
would have been (and, in fact, was by Wallace) replicated because the
scientific process is empirically verifiable. In a crude dichotomy, the
difference between science and art is discovery versus creation. Freud’s
theory of psychoanalysis probably would not have been presented by
another, because it was a creation of one individual’s mind more than it
was a discovery.
We cannot, in any absolute sense, equate happiness with progress, or
progress with happiness. But if an individual finds happiness in the
progress produced by science and technology, there is a rational way to
quantify and define how this progress can be accomplished. As scientific
progress was defined above, the definition for technological systems can
similarly be made:
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http://www.mindport.org/kevin/mhistory.html
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The major difference I can discern between a scientist and an artist is one
of belief. The scientist proceeds from one set of assumptions about the
universe and his relationship to it, and the artist proceeds from another.
The scientist presumes that we live in a rationally comprehensible
universe which is outside of ourselves, and that it is knowable by the
exercise of so-called "objective" observation and the use of formal logic.
The scientist is moved by the beauty of what he sees, and his reaction is
to want to understand it, to encompass it some way. But his way of
encompassing is different than that of the artist.
Scientific observation is of physical relationships between things. The
scientist encompasses the object of his attraction by noticing what it does
in relation to other objects and their actions. Necessarily, the scientist
must break his observed world up into discrete objects so that he has
something to observe. (This process of "lumping" things is probably a
fundamental property of the Western way of thinking.) We say, "This thing
here is a cup, this one is a teapot, this is a paper towel." All of them are
separate and discrete objects which exist apart from each other in form
and function. Certain of their qualities are fair game for scientific study. . .
in fact ANY quality is fair game as long as nothing "subjective" is brought
to the observation.
Science and art both are driven by an esthetic sense and a desire to know
the world. Science is limited by certain rules: it pretends to ignore values.
You might even say that science is really art with something left out. Both
scientist and artist have a subject sense of beauty in connection with
what they observe. The scientist does his observations according to a
certain set of beliefs about what he's doing, and the artist conducts his
observations according to a different set of beliefs which encompass
more.
Science and art, as I've said, are both ways of grokking* the world, to
use Heinlein's term. You can collect starfish skeletons on the beach and
study them mathematically or esthetically. (Mathematics IS esthetics to
some.) Each way of studying them is an attempt understand the ISness of
the starfish. But each way is also an attempt to understand a relation of
the man to the starfish, and the man to himself. The understanding of the
scientist requires a different mode of being than the understanding of the
artist, and each mode of being has its own importance in the scheme of
things. Each mode requires the manifestation of a different aspect of our
selves, and both these manifestations of self are important aspects of our
all.
In grokking the starfish, we grok ourselves. We might say that the exhibit
we're building is our grokking of a corner of the universe which we name
"starfish" and of our simultaneous grokking of ourselves grokking starfish.
Someone who sees our exhibit might say, "Look at all this stuff about
starfish." But he isn't seeing stuff about starfish, he's seeing starfish as
understood by us. We hope that his seeing it will teach him something
about his ability to widen his own understanding.
*This term appeared in Robert Heinlein's book, Stranger in a Strange
Land, which was popular with the counter-culture during the 1960's. To
"grok" something means approximately to understand it completely in all
its complexity.
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http://www.xanga.com/home.aspx?us...tdate=4%2f2%2f2005+2%3a0%3a32.480
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"The difference between science and art is not that they deal with different
objects, but that they deal with the same objects in different ways.
Science gives us conceptual knowledge of a situation; art gives us the
experience of that situation." (T. Eagleton)
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http://www.cthisspace.com/intro.html
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"In a crude dichotomy, the difference between science and art is
discovery versus creation."
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http://www.bowdoin.edu/news/archives/1bowdoincampus/002200.shtml
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“Scientists break problems into smaller and smaller ones, until we get to
one small enough to answer,” he said. “Artists often don’t care what the
answer is, because definite answers don’t exist. The exquisite
contradictions of the human heart, to me, are what make life interesting.”
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http://www.kennethsnelson.net/articles/contemporanea_heartney_90.htm
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Science has to be reproducible, and art is absolutely not supposed to be."
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For further reading:
http://www.zubiri.org/works/englishworks/nhg/ideaofphilosophy.htm
http://philosophy.lander.edu/intro/tolstoy.html
http://www.piclab.com/lee/index.php/Philosophy
http://www.stanford.edu/~rrorty/analytictrans.htm
http://sow.colloquium.co.uk/~barrett/jacques.htm
Last edited by Sitaram on Tue Jun 13, 2006 6:10 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Sitaram
Site Admin
Joined: 14 Sep 2005
Posts: 1079
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| Posted: Fri Jun 02, 2006 11:30 am Post subject: |
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Erik of myspace writes:
Answering this question historically is a good approach I think.
Not that I can be bothered to do that at work. But have you ever read Tarnas' "Passion of the Western Mind?" It's an intellectual history of the west and answers this question very well in the way I've suggested.
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