'Philosophy is dead'

 'Philosophy is dead' -Stephen Hawking

According to many, philosophy is dead because it has failed to keep up with science's progress- a progress that completely obliterates any attempt philosophers may offer at explaining the universe because of how detailed and rigorous the scientific description of nature has become. 

This conclusion, however, evidently comes from a person who has never actually taken the time to think about the definition of philosophy, in this case the branch of philosophy able to explain the natural world in an approach parallel to scientific progress: philosophy of nature.

What is philosophy of nature?

Philosophy of nature is the branch of philosophy focusing on the natural world.

The natural world can be studied through two perspectives:

-Science: explaining natural phenomena in terms of other natural phenomena or causes, focusing on components and action.

-Philosophy of nature: explaining the being and methods of being, knowledge and processes, focusing on essence and purpose

The natural sciences' common objective is to reach an understanding of nature that can be tested by experimentation, as all theories (the best explanations offered for a given phenomenon) are tested experimentally.

It is therefore evident that philosophy of nature is not equivalent to science, because philosophy of nature involves the study of nature and reality from its 'root causation'; the study of reality's own existence. It is the study of nature's first principles and proposes explanations that go beyond what experimental studies deal with.

For example, a philosopher may inquire what 'mass' means, or what 'substance' or 'potential' are to explain characteristics of nature. A scientist handles these concepts in his work, but it is beyond his scope of study to question the concept of 'mass' itself, because it is something that cannot be tested by experimentation.

The two approaches of study are, however, parallel beams of the same ladder, because they both aim to explain nature and thus cannot contradict each other, so philosophical explanations have to account for scientific knowledge when asking questions such as 'what is mass?'.

Just like philosophy must account for scientific knowledge, science is equally tied to philosophy; science is built on the philosophical assumption that there is a natural order to the universe, which can be discovered. The fact that science progresses over time proves this philosophical concept, showing that science both validates and needs this concept. The fact Hawking cannot see that his field of study has philosophy as its bedrock is rather comical; it's like a little man spitting on the giants he sits on top of.

In fact, Melvin Calvin (the Nobel prize winner in biochemistry) even pointed out that science bloomed in the Western world around 2,000-3,000 years ago from the Hebrews, and later was developed by Greeks, starting from the notion that the universe is governed by natural law, leading directly to the hypothesis of discovery. 

A person, therefore, needs to be well-informed of their scope of study, or otherwise there could be erroneous extrapolation, just like Hawking has done. An example would be the erroneous belief that due to physics' enormous progress, the human person can be explained only in terms of physics. This is a clear extrapolation of science (what can be tested by experiment) into philosophy. Humans are all philosophers and questioners by default, but we need to distinguish where science questions (what can be tested experimentally) end and philosophy questions begin.

Up until the 19th century, the fact philosophy and science are different but complementary perspectives of studying nature was largely accepted. Although opposition to this idea had begun around the 17th century, the 19th century brought the idea of scientism: the belief that only experimental science is valid knowledge for reality. Positivism is a subsection of scientism, which teaches that anything beyond science should be left untouched, and only relationships between observable phenomena should be established. 

Scientism is clearly contradictory. It is based on the belief that knowledge achieved in any other way than science is worthless. But this conclusion is ironically not a scientific one, but a philosophical one. What kind of experiment can test that only science is valid knowledge?

Furthermore, positivism is only concerned with the observable, but then this would hinder scientific progress. Newton's Law of Gravitation is not observable, for example, because the 'force' he describes is not observable, only its effects. Positivism in general prevents all kinds of knowledge, because it implies we cannot understand the essence of things, but only the observable mechanisms. So if we had followed positivism, the result would be that we would be able to describe things in great detail, but not explain them, because no scientific model would have been made and no causes would have been thought about.

Philosophy of nature needs to be based on both normal experience and science, although it does not aim to have such a detailed description as science. Philosophy cannot be tested by experiments like science, but any philosophical explanations have to be dropped if they contradict either science or normal experience. 

Many claim it's only important to explain what things are made of and how they work, and disregard anything beyond that. These people are ignoring the existence of genuine philosophical problems, because even though these two areas (how things are made and how they work) cover the most important aspects of the natural sciences, they do not cover all the questions the human mind has of nature. For example, it cannot answer any questions that require explaining nature from first principles.

Science gives a very detailed description of natural order , so it actually encourages the philosophical question of WHY there is a natural order. 

We cannot directly test philosophical explanations by experiments like science. They have to be validated with the same 2 foundations with which science is validated: logic and normal experience. This means philosophical explanations need to fit and account for normal experience and logic, so they cannot contradict reality. 

The discussion on philosophy of nature will be continued in a later article. But with these few points, it becomes evident that Hawking, alongside many others, has derailed himself into the philosophical scope of study, despite claiming it is dead. It also shows that just because one scientist claims 'philosophy is dead' this does not mean that science itself claims it.

At the end of the day, if it were dead, then the human mind would wander through the cemetery of philosophy nonetheless.