Is it not possible to run the course of philosophy without science as its backbone?

Answer 1

Given that the word science is derived from a Latin root, "Scientia, -ae" or knowledge/understanding, this all depends on what you consider science. Certainly in looking at 19th century philosophers like Fichte, Schelling, and Kant, it seems that philosophy builds on science and systems. As philosophy is the love of wisdom, and it is believed that wisdom comes from understanding, science would appear inextricable from any philosophic undertaking.

However, if you are considering science to be white lab coats and electron microscopes, then I would say, "yes" philosophy can do without this kind of science. As philosophy's aim is to help us understand how to live our lives, you don't need to know all about science in order to follow truth. Yet, it could be argued that the one who seeks to live a good life is the one who comes to UNDERSTAND (scientia,-ae) herself/himself, and is therefore using some kind of science (self-analysis, reflection, contemplation) to get to her understanding.

Answer 2

I believe that as a field philosophy is all-embracing. And so, it can take any material from any discipline and churn, criticize, justify and ponder on it. Science is a good source of a topics for philosophy.

Ultimately, all disciplines are interconnected. We may start with religion now as a starting point but end up talking about science, or we may start talking about science and end up connecting it to, let's say, ethics. It is the job of philosophy to fish out the connections.

Answer 3

I think philosophy lies mostly in the unanswerable questions and the moral questions of personal perception. Such as is it right to kill, what's the meaning of life, is there free will? So yes, you don't need science to make assumptions about the world around you...but you usually use science/facts to back yourself up.

Answer 4

From MY point of understanding or theirs in my theoretical understanding for their moments. We must admit the possibility that a person could think their way back from an insane incoherent belief system and that science in them would exist only as an unconscious and subconscious existential necessity, not as philosophy, not as conscious content for their self perceived personality (an apperception that may be distorted beyond any others.recognition or identification for that same person). Scientific truth is the truth of the unconscious and inanimate, all the dead stuff or that lacking consciousness having no need nor ability for its own moments, its identity, things in them selves.

http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/works/hl/hlessenc.htm#HL2_485

'Remark: The Thing-in-itself of Transcendental Idealism

§ 1060

Mention has already been made above of the thing-in-itself in connection with the moment of determinate being, of being-in-self, and it was remarked that the thing-in-itself as such is nothing else but the empty abstraction from all determinateness, of which admittedly we can know nothing, for the very reason that it is supposed to be the abstraction from every determination. The thing-in-itself being thus presupposed as the indeterminate, all determination falls outside it into an alien reflection to which it is indifferent.

§ 1061

For transcendental idealism this external reflection is consciousness. Since this philosophical system places every determinateness of things both as regards form and content, in consciousness, the fact that I see the leaves. of a tree not as black but as green, the sun as round and not square, and taste sugar as sweet and not bitter, that I determine the first and second strokes of a clock as successive and not as one beside the other, nor determine the first as cause and the second as effect, and so on, all this is something which, from this standpoint, falls in me, the subject. '

Hegel’s Science of Logic

Highlighted text is Lenin's underlining. The ® access his annotations.

Volume One: The Objective Logic
Book Two: The Doctrine of Essence

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Reflection - Appearance - Actuality


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http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/hegel/li_terms.htm

Answer 5

Do you really think that science is the backbone of philosophy.
I think it is reasoning, logic, You Me and God

Answer 6

it is possible without science...the more difficult test is if it is possible without logic. I think Georg Kuhlewind is a good example of how one could argue that it is indeed possible without either.

Answer 7

Yes.
Most definitely yes.
In our day and time, we have science.
Does science answer all our questions?