Why does Stephen Hawking think science has overtaken philosophy?
Erm, because philosophers are still arguing about “what is truth?” as they have been for some 3,000 years that we know of while scientists have actually been able to find out the odd thing over the same time period?
You know, ‘leccie, evolution, gravity, trivial things like that?
10 responses so far ↓
1 The Remittance Man // Sep 9, 2010 at 8:30 am
But to be fair some of them do still have a bit of an issue with the truth sometimes.
2 Pogo // Sep 9, 2010 at 8:59 am
I remember seeing a lovely comment about philosophers…
Reading philosophy is like watching an athlete on the parallel bars. You might be very impressed by the elegance, grace and skill of the activity, but when they finish they’re back exactly where they started from.
3 Falco // Sep 9, 2010 at 9:40 am
There are many scientists, particularly in certain presently fashionable fields, that could do with a read of Popper.
4 ukliberty // Sep 9, 2010 at 10:13 am
Bit of a whinge, isn’t it? Why do people get so het up about what others say about their favoured subjects?
Oh, and saying scientists are unimaginative is bizarre – reminds me of Feynmann talking about how he sees flowers.
5 Johnathan Pearce // Sep 9, 2010 at 10:47 am
Well said Tim.
6 john b // Sep 9, 2010 at 10:47 am
The reason Hawking is wrong is simply that most academic fields start off as philosophy, and become ‘not philosophy’ once they’re sufficiently established fields. Maths and physics did so early on; linguistics and psychology did so more recently. Philosophy is basically ‘the study of things we don’t really know about yet’.
7 Gareth // Sep 9, 2010 at 12:00 pm
Science has overtaken philosophy because the fruits of science can be more easily exploited for reward.
You can enlighten a mind with philosophy but you can light a room with electricity. In day to day life the latter is of greater value than the former.
8 peteswordz // Sep 9, 2010 at 7:58 pm
Difference between religeon & science is that the religeous believe in facts & scientists don’t.
Despite the ongoing fuss as far as I can see Hawking hasn’t disproved the existance of a god, just said that the universe doesn’t need one.
Thought that I find interesting:
If a Grand Unified Theory, one mathamatical statement that describes all the physical laws, is found- is a mathamatical expression a word?
In the bginning was the Word…..
9 JohnRS // Sep 9, 2010 at 8:58 pm
Science provides the surplus that allows philosophers to sit around, sponging off the rest of us, with their thumbs up their bums mouthing pointless crap and wasting valuable oxygen.
10 Tonsil // Sep 10, 2010 at 7:41 am
Oh dear, JohnRS is still smarting from the fact that he was never very good at Philosophy. Go bang a nail into a piece of wood, mate, that’ll make you feel better about yourself.
Leave a Comment