Science and the Demise of Philosophy

I call shenanigans.<p><i>Wholly oriented towards investigating and changing the material world, science rejects anything related to practical self-discovery or spiritual truth. In this lies the crisis of the widespread modern intellectualism that swears itself to science; it is incapable of investigating, understanding or dealing with human purposes, eternal values, spiritual realities or the challenges of the meaning of life. On the contrary, science relativises values and makes a private matter of them, thereby undermining them and consequently a moral and good society too. Discovery of new truths about the human soul and destiny will remain beyond its scope until the extent of ignorance about this is better appreciated and much wrong physicalistic thinking about the constitution of the human being is more widely discredited. Only when science is put firmly in its place for what it really is, a study of physical reality by physical means chiefly for material and economic ends, will the crisis be overcome.</i><p>As far as I can tell, Priddy isn't saying anything the deconstructivists haven't already; and by that I mean the same hollow self-justifying outcries that have dominated the humanistic part of C.P. Snow's Two Cultures since, well, since Wordsworth. If Priddy and his ilk could ever dream up an alternative which would "put science in its place," I'd be happy to hear it, but so far, science makes progress regardless of whether or not we have the words to describe its journey. It's a simple fact that the humanistic vanguards apparently have a very hard time coming to terms with.

Philosophy, as it is taught and developed in academia today, is in no way "essential in the further understanding of the nature of humanity and the cosmos."<p>Science and philosophy were once one. Aristotle, and Descartes where all hailed as both great scientists and great philosophers. But during the renaissance, critical thinking, creativity, and logic separated and became science. Everything that was left retained the name of philosophy.<p>To look at it another way, science has lead directly to a downfall in philosophy, in that it has provided a way for one to test theories and build upon ideas. In contrast to the progress of science, one sees that philosophy has developed into a useless branch of linguistic games ("What time is it on the sun?") and esoteric navel gazing ("Essence in this its self-movement is reflection"). Anything that can be tested or verified has been removed from the field called philosophy by the philosophers, who have today reverted to Platonists by abanding experimentation in lieu of problems of "pure" thought.<p>Consider any philosopher of the period since Descartes. Lets say Immanuel Kant. Now what is Kant's philosophy? What of Kant's philosphy has been accepted as true by the community. What of Kant's philosophical theory has been rejected as false by the community. How has the community settled these question of Kant's philosophy?<p>The answer is that there is no philosophical community. There are only philosophical camps. The only thing relating each camp to another is that they all at war with each other in a grand popularity contest. The community that gets the most air time is in the lead. There is no progress in philosophy, only novel ideas which supplantt the old due to the boredom inherent in parroting nonsense.

The fact that this chapter doesn't bother to mention Kuhn, Popper, Feyerabend, etc. tells me this is axe-grinding.<p>"The resulting weak role of 'handmaidens' who applaud progress as scientific" were Feyerabend's favorite targets.

Is this worth my time to read? My bogo-sensor was going off like crazy after reading the first couple of paragraphs.

Wow,<p>This certainly gives a powerful overview of the quandary of human beings in our modern world.<p>Bit heavy for hacker news but I welcome it.<p>The problem is, humanity won't go back to the world whose loss Priddy describes. So how do we solve these problems going forward?