PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE 



disciplines are defined around this opposition, and the studies 

 become sharply differentiated from one another. 



The result of this attitude has been a conception of the 

 relation between science and philosophy which has placed 

 investigators in the respective fields into warring camps, 

 which has made any cooperative enterprises impossible, and 

 which has made the notion of a philosophy of science a con- 

 tradiction in terms. According to this view, science has 

 stood for exact knowledge, verified conclusions, and prog- 

 ress; philosophy, for obscure ideas, conjecture, and stagna- 

 tion. Science uses mathematical methods, which forbid 

 fuzzy thinking; philosophy uses meditation, imagination, 

 and speculation, all of which lack precision and permit the 

 intrusion of ambiguity, vagueness, and obscurity. Science 

 subjects all of its ideas to experimental test and corrobora- 

 tion, promptly rejecting all inadequate hypotheses; philos- 

 ophy proceeds by pure reasoning, often discounting the 

 evidences of the senses when they conflict with the results 

 of pure logic — a fact which eventuates in the merging of 

 philosophy with poetry and mythology, and in the retention 

 in philosophy of all sorts of imaginative and fanciful ideas 

 whose only justification is their emotional agreeability. 

 Science, in its history, has exhibited progress through co- 

 operative effort; philosophy, on the other hand, has engaged 

 in continuous war between opposing schools of ideas. Hence 

 philosophy and science differ from one another in the clarity, 

 certainty, and progressiveness of the resulting knowledge; 

 and in terms of this distinction the historical encroachment 

 of science upon philosophy is to be understood. 



There is probably much in the history of these two disci- 

 plines to justify such a theory. Certainly most philosophical 

 concepts are incapable of the same precision in logical for- 

 mulation as are mathematical notions; probably too much 

 of philosophy has in the past proceeded by the "speculative" 

 method in which the philosopher retired into his study, 

 closed the doors, and endeavored to spin out a theory of the 

 universe; without doubt there has been less advancement 



