Wordgems - Philosophy: Adler: Science & Philosophy

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Philosophy:

Mortimer Adler:
Science & Philosophy

from Adler's book The Four Dimensions of Philosophy

We live in a culture in which science, along with its
applications in ever more powerful technology, pre-dominates.
That is, perhaps, the most distinctive mark of
the twentieth century.
The glorification and adulation of science give the word "scientific" its eulogistic connotation.

Other forms of intellectual endeavor call themselves
"scientific" when, in fact, their mode of inquiry, which may
be investigative, is not scientific at all in method or aim.
The adjective "scientific" has almost become a synonym for
"excellent"—for "trustworthy" and "reliable."

Under these pervasive cultural circumstances, philosophy
takes a back seat. It either does not try to compete with
scientific knowledge in the sphere of first-order questions,
occupying itself with the processes of logical and linguistic
analyses in the sphere of second-order questions; or it
weakly claims for itself the eminence it once had in antiquity
and the Middle Ages, an eminence that it no longer deserves
in view of the numerous grave mistakes made by
philosophers since the seventeenth century.

A telling sign of philosophy’s great disrepute at present is the fact that, of the 8,730 philanthropic foundations in the United States, not
one lists philosophy among the guidelines for its giving.
In this chapter I am going to defend philosophy against
the charges that are usually brought against it by those who
unfairly compare it with the achievements of science since
early modern times. I am going to ignore the fact that, in this epoch in
which science has advanced steadily, philosophy has declined
steadily. I am going to proceed on the assumption
that the ten or twelve grave errors made by modern philosophers
can be and have been corrected; that philosophy
has regained the courage to seek knowledge—both descriptive
and prescriptive—about reality, returning from analytic
work in the second order to metaphysical and moral philosophy
in the first order; and that philosophy has a future
in which its decline in the last three centuries can be reversed.
Even with these assumptions, it is necessary for us to
consider the charges against philosophy that are currently
rampant, not only in the academic mind, but in the popular
mind as well. In my view, all or most of these charges
overlook the differences between science and philosophy as
distinct modes of inquiry.

They remind one of the song of complaint in the musical comedy My Fair Lady in which the refrain is: "Why can’t a woman be like me?"
Those infatuated with science are forever singing the
same complaint: "Why can’t philosophy be like science?"—
in all those respects in which we admire the achievement of
science.
The answer, of course, is simply because philosophy
differs remarkably from science in its mode of inquiry
and in its noninvestigative method of thought. It has its own
virtues, and they are different from the virtues of science.
To make this clear, I will first state the four generally
acknowledged praiseworthy traits of scientific work. I will
then try to explain why philosophers should never expect to
emulate science in these respects, but instead should point
out the quite different respects in which philosophy can
claim merit for itself, and even clear superiority over science
certain accomplishments.
Here are the four praiseworthy traits of science.

(i) Scientists are able to reach substantial agreement
in the judgment of those regarded as competent to judge at a
given time.
a. The major disagreements in the realm of science
are those between scientists at a later period and sci-entists
at an earlier period.
b. The resolution of these disagreements in favor of
the later scientists involves steps in the advance of
science from knowing less about reality to knowing
more, or from knowing reality less accurately to
knowing it more accurately.
(ii) It follows from what has just been said that science
can rightly claim to make progress in the course of
time, and to make it more and more quickly as more individuals
are engaged in scientific work.
(iii) Science is useful in ways that enable it to claim
that it showers great benefits upon human life and human
society. The application of scientific knowledge in the production
of technological devices to produce goods and
services that are unrealizable without science is, perhaps, in
many minds, the biggest feather in the hat of scientific success.
(iv) Science has become in modern times a public enterprise;
scientists cooperate with one another; they engage
in teamwork; they interact. Numbers of scientists can pool
their efforts in trying to solve the same problem. In this respect,
scientific work stands at the opposite extreme to the
painter, the composer, or the poet. The work of the individual
artist is a private enterprise; rarely is this the case in science;
and when it happens, it seldom remains that way.

In all of these four respects, the current attitude toward
philosophy is generally negative.

(i) Philosophers at a given time do not reach agreement
on the solution of problems. They do not resolve the
issues on which they differ.
(ii) Philosophy does not appear to make progress
from epoch to epoch, or from century to century. The retirement
of philosophy in recent times to the sphere of second-
order questions may have been prudent in view of the
failures of philosophers to reach agreement on first-order
questions, but that can hardly be regarded as progress.
(iii) Philosophy is not useful. It has no applications in
technology. It bakes no bread and builds no bridges. If it is
not at all useful, what good is it?
(iv) Philosophy has seldom been carried on as a public
enterprise in which philosophers interact and work together
as a team to solve their problems. It is much more like the
individual and private work of the creative artist than it is
like the pooled contributions of many scientists working together
on the same problem.
What follows are responses to the foregoing challenges
to the worth of philosophy. In my judgment these responses
are quite satisfactory, though they are rarely given. They
are sound because they stem from understanding the great
difference between science and philosophy, a difference as
great as that between mathematics and empirical science. I
am going to deal with the question of progress first and then
turn to the question of agreement and disagreement in philosophy.

With respect to progress in philosophy: The history of
science in the West and the history of philosophy do not run
parallel courses, in which empirical science advances more
and more rapidly as it uses more and more powerful instruments
of observation and philosophy progresses, if at
all, much more slowly from epoch to epoch. One should not
expect in philosophy anything like the progress that has occurred
in the history of science, in view of the fact that
philosophy is noninvestigative, has its empirical base in
common human experience, and is continuous with common
sense.
Philosophy flowered at its birth in the fifth and fourth
centuries B.C. The philosophical insights and wisdom it attained
in those early centuries were preserved and passed on
after the Dark Ages in the mediaeval universities. The great
teachers there were excellent students of Plato and Aristotle,
and, as their followers, they made advances in detail, refinements
in analysis, and here and there formulated new
arguments for truths they received from antiquity.
Then, beginning in the seventeenth century, with the
attempts by Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, and Locke, each
trying to start philosophical thought anew, largely ignoring
or rejecting the accumulated wisdom of the past, philosophy
started its decline, which has continued to the present day.
This decline was caused by making philosophical mistakes
that could have been avoided had they been as docile students
of antiquity as their predecessors in the Middle Ages.
[See my book Ten Philosophical Mistakes, especially the
Epilogue, "Modern Science and Ancient Wisdom," which, I
think, explains the decline of philosophical thought in modern
times.]
Two factors are mainly responsible for the progress that
has been made in scientific knowledge. On the one hand,
advances in observational techniques and their employment
to explore new fields of phenomena result in the steady accumulation
of more and more data of special experience.
On the other, new theoretical insights are achieved by the
development of better and more comprehensive theories.
These two factors interact. The discovery of new data by
investigation occasions or stimulates advances in theorizing;
and new theoretical constructions often call forth experimental
or investigative ingenuity in the search for supporting
or refuting data.

Furthermore, as we have seen, increasing specialization and ever more intensive division of labor occur in science; and this, in turn, is related to the
ever-growing number of scientists at work which, in purely
quantitative terms, accounts for cumulative progress at an
accelerating rate.
In philosophy, there is no accumulation of new data;
there are no advances in observational techniques and no
new observational discoveries; there is no specialization and
no division of labor. Since common experience at its core
always remains the same, it does not by itself occasion or
stimulate advances in theorizing. Since these things are impossible
in philosophy, precisely because it is noninvestigative,
it has made no progress, or less progress and at a much
slower rate.
If the same kind, amount, or rate of progress could be
expected of philosophy, then it would be fair to say that science
is vastly superior to philosophy in making progress. It
is clearly wrong, however, to expect the same kind of progress—
or the same rate of progress—from a noninvestigative
as from an investigative mode of inquiry, especially in view
of the bearing of its investigative procedure on the main
factor responsible for progress in science.

To say that philosophy is inferior to science in regard to progress is like
saying that a fish is inferior to a bird in locomotion.

Both can move forward to an objective, each with a certain velocity,
but the difference in the manner and the rate of their
movement reflects the difference in the media through
which they move.
What I have just said should not be interpreted as condoning
philosophy’s failure to make greater progress than it
has so far. Common experience being a constant factor,
progress in philosophy must be made on the side of theorizing
rather than on the empirical side—that is, in the development
of new theoretical insights, improvements in
analysis, the formulation of more precise questions, the construction
of more comprehensive theories, and the removal
of the inconsistencies, embarrassments, paradoxes, and puzzles that have long beset philosophical thought.

Some progress of this sort has been made in the past, and some has occurred quite recently, but it must nevertheless be admitted
that the total extent of it falls far short of what might be
reasonably expected.
In my judgment, the central reason for this lies in the
fact that, for the most part, philosophical work has been
carried on by thinkers working in isolation, and not as a
public enterprise in which thinkers make serious efforts to
cooperate with one another.

A little earlier I pointed out that the ever-growing number of scientists at work accounted, in part, for accelerating, cumulative progress. The
creation of departments of philosophy in our institutions of
higher learning, it could be said, has greatly increased the
number of philosophers at work. If this has not produced
the same kind of result that the same phenomenon has produced
in science and certainly it has not—the reason, I
submit, lies in the failure of the participants in the philosophical
enterprise to cooperate as scientists do in their ventures.
What does this all come to?

First, philosophy by its very nature cannot make the same kind and rate of progress that is made in science; to expect it to do so is to make a
false demand; to denigrate philosophy for not doing so is
unjustified.

Second, because of the difference in the factors
operative in the two disciplines, it is more difficult to make
progress—and more difficult to make it steadily and at an
ever-accelerating pace—in philosophy than in science. [In
the mid-nineteenth century, William Whewell, head of
Trinity College, Cambridge University, and himself an
eminent philosopher of science, proposed a reform in the
curriculum for the undergraduate degree. One of its guiding
principles was his distinction between permanent and progressive
studies. In the category of permanent studies,
Whewell placed portions of science and mathematics, but it
mainly comprised the classics of imaginative literature and
philosophy. In his view, the category of progressive studies
consisted largely of science and mathematics.]

Philosophy is inferior to science now not because it falls to make the same
kind or rate of progress, but because it fails to advance in a
way and at a pace that is as appropriate to its noninvestigative
character as the manner and pace of scientific progress
is appropriate to a discipline that is investigative in method.
If philosophy were to do as well in its medium as science
does in its, the correct statement of the case would not be
that philosophy is inferior to science in progress, but only
that it is distinctly different in this respect.
With respect to agreement and disagreement in philosophy:
One of the most common complaints about philosophy
is that philosophers always disagree. This complaint is given
added force by pointing out that, in contrast to philosophy,
there is a large area of agreement among scientists. Furthermore,
when scientists disagree, we expect them to work
at and succeed in settling their differences. They have at
their disposal and they employ effective implements of decision
whereby they can resolve their disagreements and
obtain a concurrence of opinion among those qualified to
judge the matters under dispute.
Philosophical disagreements persist; or, to speak more
accurately, since there is so little genuine disagreement or
joining of issues in philosophy, differences of opinion remain
unclarified, undebated, and unresolved. It is frequently
far from clear that philosophers who appear to differ
are even addressing themselves to the same subject or
trying to answer the same question.
This state of affairs gives rise to the widely prevalent
judgment that, in this matter of agreement and disagreement,
philosophy is plainly inferior to science. Nevertheless,
as in the matter of progress, the comparison of science
and philosophy with respect to agreement is falsely drawn
and the judgment based on it is unfairly made.
One difference between science and philosophy, already
pointed out, helps us to rectify the erroneous impression
that agreement generally obtains in science while disagreement is rife in philosophy. Because philosophy relies solely
on common experience in dealing with first-order questions,
philosophers widely separated in time can be treated as
contemporaries, whereas with the ever-changing state of the
data acquired by ongoing investigation, only scientists
working at the same time can function as contemporaries.
This basic difference between science and philosophy results
in a different temporal pattern of agreement and disagreement
in each, to whatever extent genuine agreements and
disagreements do, in fact, exist.
The scientists of a given century or time tend to disagree
with and reject the formulations of earlier scientists,
largely because the latter are based on insufficient data.
Disagreement in science occurs vertically across the centuries;
and most of the agreements in science occur along the
same horizontal time line among scientists at work during
the same period.

By contrast, there is considerable and often
unnoticed agreement across the centuries among philosophers
living at different times; the striking disagreements—
or differences of opinion—occur mainly among philosophers
alive at the same time. In short, we find some measure
of agreement and of disagreement in both science and
philosophy, but we find the temporal pattern of it quite different
in each case.
The judgment that philosophy is inferior to science with
respect to agreement focuses entirely on the horizontal time
line, where we find the maximum degree of agreement
among scientists and the minimum degree of it among philosophers.
If we shift our attention to the vertical time line,
there is some ground for the opposite judgment. Looking at
the opinions of scientists in an earlier century, we come
away with the impression of substantial and extensive disagreement,
whereas we find a considerable measure of
agreement among philosophers across the centuries.

To judge philosophy inferior by expecting or demanding
that its pattern of agreement and disagreement should
conform to the pattern exhibited by science is to judge it by
reference to a model or standard that is as inapplicable as
the model of scientific progress is inapplicable to philosophy.
To dismiss this judgment as wrongly made, however,
is not to condone philosophy for its failure to achieve what
might be reasonably expected of it on its own terms.
The most crucial failure of philosophy so far is the failure
of philosophers to face each other in clear and genuine
disagreements, to join issue and engage in the debate of disputed
questions. Only when this defect is overcome will
philosophers be able to settle their differences by rational
means and achieve the measure of agreement that can be
reasonably expected of them.
Here, as with respect to progress, the difficulties are
greater for philosophy. The decision between competing
scientific formulations by reference to crucial data obtained
by investigation is easier than the resolution of philosophi-cal
issues by rational debate. Nevertheless, the difficulties
that confront philosophy with respect to agreement and
disagreement can be surmounted in the same way that the
difficulties it faces with respect to progress can be over-come—
namely, by the conduct of philosophy as a public,
rather than a private enterprise.
When philosophy is properly conducted as a public enterprise
and philosophers work cooperatively, they will succeed
to a much greater extent than they do now in addressing
themselves to the same problems, clearly joining issue
where they differ in their answers, and carrying on rational
debate of the issues in a way that holds some promise of
their eventual resolution. [For a discussion of the propadeutic
service performed for philosophy by dialectical work,
which cannot be done except as a public and cooperative
enterprise, see my book The Idea of Freedom, Vol. 1, Part
III, especially Chapter 8. Such work should help philosophers
to agree about the issues on which they differ and to
argue more relevantly with one another, thus increasing the
degree to which they cooperate and interact. This was the
point of Professor Arthur Lovejoy’s presidential address in
1916 before the American Philosophical Association on
some conditions of progress in philosophy.]
It is, therefore, fair to say that philosophy is at present
inferior to science with respect to agreement and disagreement,
but only if one means that philosophy has not yet
achieved what can reasonably be expected of it—a measure
and a pattern of agreement and disagreement appropriate to
its character as a noninvestigative discipline and hence distinctly
different from the measure and pattern of these
things in science.
I reiterate that philosophy, like science, can be conducted
as a public enterprise, wherein philosophers work
cooperatively. In the very nature of the case that is possible,
even though little has been done to move philosophy in that
direction. Nevertheless, should philosophy ever fully realize
what is inherently possible, its achievement with respect to
agreement and disagreement will be as commendable as the
achievement of science in the same respect, for each will
then have done all it can do within the limitations of its
method as a mode of inquiry and appropriate to its character
as a type of knowledge.
With respect to the use of philosophy: Knowledge is
useful. What is known may not always be put to use in the
management or conduct of human affairs or in the control
of man’s environment, but it always can be. If it is not, its
latent usefulness remains to be exploited in the future. Intrinsically
useless knowledge is a contradiction in terms.
We often speak of knowledge in use as applied knowledge.
The Greek philosophers laid down a basic division in
the use or application of knowledge, which is worth recalling.
In the sphere of the practical they distinguished between
production and action—between the sphere of man’s
efforts to make things or to control the forces of nature in
order to achieve certain results, and the sphere of human
conduct, both individual and social. They also distinguished
between knowledge itself, as capable of being used or applied,
and a special type of knowledge which they said must
be added in order to put knowledge to use.
The latter—the special knowledge that is operative
when knowledge is put to use—the Greeks called techne.
The English equivalent of that word is, of course,
"technique," but I prefer the more colloquial "know-how."
Distinguishing between the spheres of application or
use, we can speak of productive and practical know-how—
that is, the know-how that is involved in the business of
making things or achieving desired effects and results and
the know-how that is involved in applying knowledge to the
affairs of action, the problems of individual conduct and the
conduct of society.
Practical know-how, particularly that form of it which
is involved in applying scientific knowledge, concerns the
means for achieving whatever ends of individual or social
action we set up for ourselves.

It does not, and cannot, tell us what ends we ought to pursue, but it may tell us what ends are, or are not, practicable to pursue because adequate
means are, or are not, available; it often gives us knowledge
of the diverse means that are available for achieving a particular
goal; and, with respect to alternative means, it often
enables us to make a judgment about their relative efficiency
or effectiveness.
Productive know-how, again especially that form of it
which is involved in applying scientific knowledge, concerns
the steps to be taken in making useful tools and machines,
improving their efficiency, and shaping or controlling
nature to serve our purposes.

It does not, and cannot, tell us what our purposes ought to be; it merely helps us to realize whatever purposes we may have, so far as their realization
depends upon instrumentalities that we can devise or controls that we can exercise over natural processes.

Currently, such productive know-how, based on science, is
called technology. [The word "technology," which, according
to its Greek roots, should mean "know-that about know-how," is thus currently used as if it had the same meaning as "technique" (i.e., skill or know-how).]

It would be reasonable to expect each different branch
of knowledge to have a kind of usefulness or application
distinctively and characteristically its own. What is the usefulness
of philosophical knowledge? With regard to productive
know-how it is generally recognized that philosophy
is totally useless; it has no technological applications whatsoever.
As William James said, it "bakes no bread"; it builds
no bridges, makes no bombs, invents no instruments, concocts
no poisons, harnesses no power, and so forth.
Francis Bacon’s famous remark that knowledge is power (that is,
that knowledge gives us mastery over nature and an ability
to produce or control effects according to our wishes) is as
false in the case of philosophical knowledge as it is true in
the case of scientific knowledge.
With regard to practical know-how, philosophy is just
as deficient, though this is not as generally recognized as its
deficiency with regard to productive know-how. Philosophical
knowledge does not instruct us concerning the
means available for achieving whatever results we desire, or
whatever goals or objectives we may set ourselves. By itself
(without the addition of scientific knowledge), it does not
tell us whether our practical purposes are or are not practicable,
because there are or are not adequate means for
achieving them. Nor does it enable us to judge the relative
efficiency or effectiveness of competing means for achieving
the same ends.
Is philosophy, then, totally useless?

The answer must be in the affirmative if the usefulness of knowledge is exhaustively represented by the kinds of productive and practical
know-how that have their basis in scientific knowledge. But
that is not the whole story.

As I pointed out earlier, science does not and cannot tell
us what ends we ought to pursue; it does not and cannot tell
us what our purposes ought to be. However useful it is productively,
it does not tell us whether we ought or ought not
to produce certain things (such as thermonuclear bombs or
supersonic transport planes); it does not tell us whether we
ought or ought not to exercise certain controls over natural
processes (such as human procreation or changes in
weather).

However useful it is practically, it does not tell us
whether we ought or ought not to employ certain means to
achieve our ends, on any basis other than their relative efficiency;
it does not tell us whether one goal ought or ought
not to be preferred to another. It does not tell us, in short,
what we ought or ought not to do and what we ought or
ought not to seek.
In Chapter 5, where I dealt with the tests of truth in
philosophy, I pointed out that there were two distinct modes
of truth, not one. The first is the correspondence theory of
truth, according to which our thinking about reality is true
if it agrees with the way things really are or are not. We
called this mode of truth descriptive. It is expressed in
statements that contain "is" and "is not." The other mode of
truth is prescriptive, and is expressed in statements that
contain the words "ought" or "ought not."
Philosophical knowledge of the first order is the dimension
of philosophy in which we find descriptive truth. It is
in the second dimension of philosophy that we find the prescriptive
truths of ethical and political philosophy.
These truths state the categorical moral obligations that
govern the conduct of our lives and the institutions of our
societies. In this second dimension, we find the use that
philosophy uniquely confers on us.
The difference in the usefulness of science and philosophy
corresponds to the difference in their methods as modes
of inquiry. No question properly belongs to science which
cannot be answered or elucidated by investigation. That is
precisely why no ought question is scientific and why,
therefore, science includes no prescriptive or normative
branch, no ought knowledge.
Beginning in the seventeenth century, the natural sciences
gradually separated themselves from speculative philosophy.
More recently, the social sciences have declared
their independence of philosophy in its prescriptive or normative
dimensions. In order to establish themselves as sub-divisions
of science, such disciplines as economics, politics,
and sociology had to eschew all normative considerations
(that is, all ought questions or, as they are sometimes called,
questions of value).

They had to become purely descriptive, in this respect exactly like the natural sciences. They had to restrict themselves to questions of how men do, in fact, behave, individually and socially, and forego all attempts to
say how they ought in principle to behave.
Science and philosophy as public enterprises: There is
no question that it is advantageous for each to be conducted
as a public rather than a private enterprise. But the differences
in their modes of inquiry and their methods make it
impossible for them to be public enterprises in the same
way, and also make it more difficult for philosophy than for
science to be thus conducted.
If philosophy and science were as much alike as two
subdivisions of science (for example, physics and chemistry
or zoology and botany), the expectation of similar performance
would be justified. That, however, is not the case. All
the subdivisions of science involve essentially the same type
of method: they are all investigative as well as empirical
disciplines. Philosophy is noninvestigative. Hence, the comparability
of science and philosophy as modes of inquiry
that seek knowledge in the form of doxa must be qualified
by the essential difference between an investigative and
noninvestigative procedure in acquiring knowledge and
testing theories or conclusions.

Three consequences follow from this essential difference.
I call attention to them, not only because they help
understanding the divergent characteristics of science and
philosophy as comparable disciplines, but also because they
enable us to modify the prevailing judgments about philosophy’s
inferiority to science with respect to agreement
and progress. The comparison—and evaluation—of science
and philosophy in these respects must be made with an eye
on the difference between them and with due account taken
of the implications of that difference.
Because science is investigative and philosophy is not,
specialization and division of labor are possible in science
as they are not in philosophy—at least not to the same extent.
The multiplicity of the major subdivisions of science,
and the further subsectioning of the major subdivisions, is
closely related to the multiplicity of specific techniques for
carrying on the investigation of nature or society, each a
technique for exploring a special field of phenomena. Men
become specialists in science through mastering one or more
of these techniques. No one can master all of them. The
ideal of the generalist in science may, in the remote past,
have had the appearance of attainability, but it does so no
longer. To be a scientist now is to be a specialist in science.
The total work of science is thus accomplished by the specialization
of its workers and by an intensive division of labor,
not only on the side of investigation, but also on the
side of theoretical developments or constructions relevant to
the data of investigation in a particular field.
Turning to philosophy, we find an opposite state of affairs.
The core of common experience to which the empirical
philosopher appeals is the same for all; and common or
ordinary experience involves no specialized techniques.
Hence, there is and can be no basis for specialization or for
division of labor in philosophy on the empirical side. These
things naturally pertain to the work of men when they investigate, just as naturally they play no part in the work of
men when they do not.
On the theoretical side, there is some possibility of a
division of labor in philosophy—as between logic and
metaphysics, or between metaphysics and ethics. In fact,
specialization has occurred both in the university teaching
of philosophy and in the concentration of this or that professor
of philosophy upon this or that sector of philosophical
inquiry. Nevertheless, it remains possible for one man to
make contributions in all the major sectors of philosophical
thought. [It may be that under the prevailing conditions of
academic life, professors of philosophy have to become specialists
in one philosophical area or another. But, ideally,
philosophers should not be specialists as scientists and
mathematicians are, but generalists, working in all of philosophy’s
four dimensions.]

The great philosophers of the past have certainly been generalists in philosophy; and in our own century the writings of Dewey, Russell, White-head, Bergson, Santayana, and Maritain touch on all the
major questions of philosophy. This sufficiently makes the
point of contrast between science and philosophy, for,
though in antiquity, before specialization took place, Aristotle
could make contributions to the major fields of science,
that is no longer possible. In fact, specialization and
division of labor have now reached the point at which it is
almost impossible for one man to do outstanding theoretical
work in more than a single field of scientific research.
Because there is so much specialization and division of
labor in science, and so little in philosophy, as a conse-quence
of the fact that one is and the other is not investiga-tive,
it follows as a further consequence that the authority of
experts must be relied on in science and cannot be relied on
in philosophy.
The individual scientist accepts the findings of other
scientists—both in his own and other fields—without redoing
the investigations on which those findings are based. He
may, in rare instances, check the data by repeating the experiment, but for the most part, especially with regard to
matters not immediately within his own special field of re-search,
he proceeds by accepting the findings of reputable
experts.

He cannot do otherwise and get his own work done.
In many cases, though not in all, the individual scientist
also accepts the theoretical conclusions reached by other sci-entists,
if these have the authority of recognized experts,
without checking all the steps by which those conclusions
were originally reached or tested. In other words, a highly
specialized scientist, working in some narrow corner of the
whole scientific enterprise, accepts a large body of scientific
opinions on the authority of other scientists.

It would be impossible for him or her to do otherwise.
Since philosophers proceed entirely in terms of common
experience to which all have equal access, and since it
is by reference to common experience that philosophical
theories or conclusions must be tested, philosophers need
never accept a single philosophical opinion on the authority
of other philosophers. On the contrary, whatever theories a
philosopher holds and whatever conclusions he reaches he
can and should arrive at them by judgments he himself
makes in light of the very same evidence that is available to
all others, including all other philosophers. Where, in the
case of scientific work, the individual cannot dispense with
the authority of his fellow workers, he cannot, in the case of
philosophical work, rely on it. One might go further and
say that the person who accepts any philosophical opinions
whatsoever simply on the authority of their spokesmen, no
matter how eminent, is no philosopher.
Because science depends on special experience acquired
by investigation, whereas philosophy relies on and appeals
only to the common experience of mankind which, at its
core, is the same for all individuals at all times and places,
philosophers have a contemporaneity that scientists cannot
have.

Philosophical questions that arise from and relate to
common experience can make contemporaries of philoso-phers
as far apart in time and place as Plato and Bradley,
Aristotle and Dewey, Augustine and William James. Another
way of saying this is that there is no purely philosophical
question that concerns us today to which it would
be impossible to find an answer given by a philosopher who
lived at some prior time. Earlier philosophers may not have
actually considered all the questions with which we are concerned,
but in many cases they did, and in all cases they
could have. Hence, in dealing with controversies about
philosophical matters, the disputants may be drawn from
centuries far apart.
Not all philosophical questions have the timelessness
just indicated. This characteristic pertains only to those
purely philosophical problems that depend exclusively on
common experience for their solution and involve no admixture
of scientific knowledge. What I have called mixed
questions in philosophy—especially those that depend, both
for their formulation and solution, on the state of scientific
knowledge—vary from time to time. Those that confront
philosophers today are certainly not the same as those faced
by Aristotle or Descartes. The same holds true of those
mixed questions in philosophy which depend on special
historical knowledge, and of those which lie athwart the
border that separates philosophy from revealed religion.

With these exceptions noted, let me repeat the point:
purely philosophical problems are of such a nature that the
philosophers who tackle them can have the character of
contemporaries despite their wide separation in time and
place. The accidents of their immersion in different cultural
milieus may affect their vocabularies and their notional idioms,
but this does not prevent them from being construed as
addressing themselves to the same problems and as engaging
in debate concerning the merits of competing solutions.
The very opposite is the case in science. A scientific
dispute usually, if not always, involves individuals living at
the same time. At any time, the current scientific problems
to be solved are conditioned by the state of the data currently
in hand or the state of the research currently being
carried forward. Competing theories are sponsored by individuals
who take account of the latest findings of research
and of the directions taken by investigations going on. Archimedes,
Galileo, Newton, and Einstein cannot function as
contemporaries in the way in which Aristotle, Aquinas,
Locke, and William James can.
Let me state this point in still another way: the whole
record of past philosophical thought can have critical relevance
to current philosophical problems, whereas the whole
record of past scientific work is not as relevant to current
research and theorizing. A much larger portion of the scientific
past has only antiquarian interest for scientists today.
if there are philosophers today who would say that an
equally large portion of the philosophical past can be simi-larly
regarded, their view of this matter, I submit, stems
from their relegation of philosophy to the plane of second-order
questions, or to their not recognizing the role of
common experience in the formulation and solution of first-order
questions that are purely philosophical...
... when there is an apparent conflict between
science and philosophy, it is to philosophy that we
must turn for the resolution. Science cannot provide it.
When scientists such as Einstein, Bohr, and Heisenberg become
involved with mixed questions, they must philosophize.

They cannot discuss these questions merely as scientists;
the principles for the statement and solution of such
problems come from philosophy, not from science.
For all these reasons, I think we are compelled to regard
the contributions of philosophy as having greater value for
us than the contributions of science. I say this even though
we must all gratefully acknowledge the benefits that science
and its technological applications confer upon us. The
power that science gives us over our environment, health,
and lives can, as we all know, be either misused and misdirected,
or used with good purpose and results.

Without the prescriptive knowledge given us by ethical and political
philosophy, we have no guidance in the use of that power,
directing it to the ends of a good life and a good society.

The more power science and technology confer upon us, the
more dangerous and malevolent that power may become
unless its use is checked and guided by moral obligations
stemming from our philosophical knowledge of how we
ought to conduct our lives and our society.

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