PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



particular subject matter. The philosopher was one who 

 loved wisdom without being greatly concerned as to the 

 specific kind of object to which he directed his devotion. 

 There is reason to believe that by the time of Plato and 

 Aristotle the term had narrowed somewhat in scope and 

 no longer included mathematics. At least it seems significant 

 that the two greatest philosophers of antiquity were not 

 mathematicians. Though Plato considered knowledge of 

 mathematics an important preliminary to the study of 

 philosophy, he apparently did not suppose it a part of 

 philosophy proper. Aristotle wrote authoritatively on a 

 wide range of subjects including logic, rhetoric, metaphysics, 

 physics, astronomy, meteorology, .cosmology, botany, zool- 

 ogy, psychology, ethics, and politics, and there is reason to 

 believe that all of these were in some sense a part of his 

 philosophy. It is probable that the shift of the center of 

 civilization from Greece to Rome is responsible for the 

 introduction of the word "science'' into the vocabulary of 

 culture, and it was quite natural that the term should be 

 adopted to characterize those intellectual disciplines which 

 were to be differentiated either by method or by subject 

 matter from philosophy as the mother study. Scholasticism 

 witnessed the separation of theology from philosophy. The 

 revival of learning and the turning of man's attention to the 

 natural world may have been responsible for the increased 

 use of the term "science" to characterize the disciplines 

 which had broken away from philosophy. Even as late as 

 the sixteenth century a candidate for the degree of doctor 

 of philosophy was regarded as equally competent to teach 

 mathematics, astronomy, physics, metaphysics, logic, rhet- 

 oric, ethics, and politics. Christian Wolff, almost two cen- 

 turies later, actually taught mathematics, physics, logic, 

 psychology, practical philosophy, and political science at 

 the University of Halle. The full title of Newton's great 

 work, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, 

 determined the use of the term "natural philosophy' as a 

 characterization of physics — a use which persisted until 



