Introduction
Ever since recorded history, there is evidence to show that man desired for the ability to acquire knowledge and understanding. For thousands of years, aside from the desire for material wealth there is no other pursuit that is well-documented than the pursuit of knowledge. And for thousands of years the main tool for acquiring true knowledge is through philosophy. But after the Age of Enlightenment the world has come to depend on a new tool for acquiring true knowledge and it is none other than science. There is now a need to know if science should be used as the sole standard for knowing truth. Bernard Williams and Hans-Georg Gadamer does not agree and pointed out that there are branches of knowledge that the scientific method could not and will not be able to understand and appreciate.
Shaping Western Philosophy
Before the advent of rigorous philosophical formula that will enable men to acquire knowledge the ancients rely on religion in their search for truth. Thus, for a very long time, religious leaders, priests, prophets, and teachers desired for the holy grail of knowledge. Most believe that it comes from a direct revelation from God. So for thousands of years this has been the approved route to enlightenment. In the modern world there are other avenues for learning and acquisition but this does not mean that the ancients were mistaken in using religion for seeking truth, but it is a discussion that is not covered in this study.
Others believe that knowledge acquisition can be had when one uses his powers of observation. By observing the world around him he can determine God’s plans and God’s ways. Therefore there are religions such as Buddhism that does not only look to the heavens for answers but also searching within the person for true enlightenment. Aside from religion the ancients began to understand about the basics of physics, mathematics, and astronomy. If they did not possess this ability then it would have been impossible for them to construct the Pyramids of Egypt, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Taj Majal in India and others.
It did not take long before the ancients realize that there are branches of knowledge that could not be acquired while limiting oneself to crude mathematics and mere observation. There are truths that could only be extracted through philosophy. Thus, aside from religion, observation and basic scientific methods another major tool of knowledge acquisition was developed and proven very effective by the Greeks, specifically Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. It is impossible to understand Western civilization without first stopping by and inspecting the works of the aforementioned masters. These three men revolutionized the way Westerners view their world.
But in the Second Millennium after the coming of Jesus there is no other philosophical force that can rival Christianity. During this time, Greek philosophy either work in conjunction with the development and propagation of Christianity or it took a backseat. For more or less 1500 years the most dominant force that shaped the Western world is the Christian religion. For many Europeans in the Medieval Ages it would have been impossible to understand life without consulting the Bible or listen to the explanation of the priests and the popes. Life in those times was as predictable as the one described above.
Suddenly everything began to turn on its head. With the advent of Protestantism and the Age of Enlightenment, the Western world was about to experience a radical transformation. The absolute power held by the Church of Rome began to wane in the latter part of the Second millennium and geo-political nations began to rise up, they became independent and even in exist in contention with the Roman Catholic Church. It is no coincidence that at this point in human history, the scientific revolution began.
Freed from the shackles of religion and encouraged by the discoveries made in mathematics, physics, and mechanics as well as astronomy man realized that the world can be observed and described not by subjective terms but by explicit and objective terms. Men realized that gods do not interfere or mess up the affairs of man but on the contrary the earth works like clockwork. It can be likened to a machine that works perfectly day in and day out. It is governed by scientific laws that can be observed to work without fail in the same way that the sun rises and sets in the morning and the afternoon of each day.
When the Industrial Revolution came, science as opposed to philosophy began to gather much steam and started to break-away from the supposedly antiquated and obsolete philosophical understanding of human beings and the world he lives in. As if on cue inventions and technological marvels became common in the 18th century. Much later microscopes, thermometers, powerful telescopes, and even x-rays encouraged many that there is now a better way to study the earth and all that it contains. When Charles Darwin discovered a pattern of evolution within plant and animal species it caused an upheaval in the scientific as well as religious community. From that day forward the break between science and philosophy became apparent and there seems to be no reconciliation in sight.
Bernard Williams
Williams was a British philosopher who questions the wisdom of separating science and philosophy. He pointed out the fallacy of giving undue importance to science and valuing it more than philosophy. He was able to put it succinctly when he wrote:
Analytic philosophy has become increasingly dominated by the idea that science, and only science, describes the world as it is in itself, independent of perspective … the idea that science leaves no room for an independent philosophical enterprise has reached the point at which leading practitioners sometimes suggest that all that is left for philosophy is to try to anticipate what the presumed scientific solutions to all metaphysical problems will eventually look like (Williams, Sect. 5).
It seems that men and women in the modern world are so afraid to make mistakes. If in the past they were afraid of religious repercussions to their errors this time they fear the onslaught coming from the scientific community. These are institutions and even individuals who seemed to have created a new religion out of scientism. For them it is sacrilegious to utter any pronouncements regarding the truth without using absolute and objective terminologies that are framed by temperature readings; distance between two points; atomic weight; chemical structures etc.
Williams objected to this view not because he is an old fashioned romantic who was unable to move on and accept the fact that when man discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe, all philosophical arguments are thrown out of the window. In regards to the last statement Williams together with other philosophers rose to the challenge of opposing the erroneous view that philosophy is another means of knowing truth or at least knowledge and understanding of human life.
Williams began his rebuttal by examining how science will fail in understanding ethics and he wrote:
… I think it is clear that while there is a universal human need for qualities such as accuracy (the dispositions to acquire true beliefs) and sincerity (the disposition to say, if anything, what one believes to be true), the form of these dispositions and of the motivations that they embody are culturally and historically various … the reflective understanding of our ideas and motivations, which I take to be by general agreement a philosophical aim, is going to involve historical understanding (Williams, Sect. 5).
In order to fully understand what Williams is saying the following make-believe scenario can prove helpful. Let the reader imagine for once that there a competition between the scientism and philosophy was sanctioned in the University. Those who are in favor of scientism may build an instrument capable of observing and describing the world. They would undoubtedly produce a robot with sophisticated features and filled up with space-age hardware and powered up with cutting-edge software. On the other Williams and Gadamer’s group would simply hire a fellow philosopher – a person that aside from being a master of various philosophical systems is also a gifted historian – to represent their cause.
The machine is given the first chance to analyze and make sense of the 21st century. The robot will collect data, make measurements, and take samples. One could imagine the robot to measure the distance between the earth and the sun as well as the relative distance between the solar system and other neighboring galaxies. The robot will then take soil samples, take snapshots of various species of flora and fauna. Then after finishing up in the natural world the machine would venture into some of the most populous city in the world and began observing humans. The robot will make a permanent record that sleeping habits in New York is very much different from the people living in Amsterdam.
The machine will go to industrialized cities near the shorelines of major countries. The robot may even arrive there in time to observe a monster hurricane ravaging areas like Houston and Cuba. The robot will make a note that even if the people were warned to evacuate they refuse to do so. Then the machine will go back to headquarters and dump all the information gathered in so many weeks of work. The data is fed to a network of supercomputers and every minute detail is analyzed and compared with other known information regarding man and the green planet.
On the other hand the philosopher sent by the opposing camp can emulate what the robot has done previously. He can visit key cities around the world. Go through virgin forests, dive into deep oceans and fly airplanes to see a bird’s eye-view of the world below. He can also climb up mountains and observe the cities below him. He can also visit typhoon prone areas situated near shorelines. He can do all these and just like the robot compile a list of records and adopt the same data gathering scheme.
The philosopher goes back to headquarters and just like the robot begins to analyze information that he gathered in so many weeks of research. But the only difference between the two is that the philosopher shares his findings with other human beings. Together they form a team that goes through all the material. At the end of the project the philosopher and the robot will be asked to attend a debriefing session with the project managers and the financier of the so-called imaginary experiment. When asked the exact the distance between the earth and the sun, the robot supplied the information in less than a millisecond. But when asked why New Yorkers have different sleeping patterns as compared to other people around the globe, the robot cannot supply an objective and technical answer.
When the panel continued with its line of questioning they finally asked the robot why there are those who refused to evacuate their homes even if they know that there is imminent danger, the robot was stumped once again. But when the panel used the same types of questions and directed it to the philosopher he finds it easy to satisfy them with his answers. The philosopher has a way of understanding human nature. In this simple analogy it has been shown that science is limited especially in areas concerning ethics and values.
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Aside from Williams, Hans-Georg Gadamer is another philosopher who found the idea of exalting science over and above philosophy ridiculous. Gadamer’s view can be encapsulated in the following statements:
“human beings … are both bearers of meaning and creative participants in the set of meaning-bearing and meaning-determining practices that constitute the cultures and traditions in the context of which they live their lives … No sequence of words, however intelligently constructed and carefully printed and bound, absent a tradition in which it can be read and understood, can be interpreted as an eminent text, and rise to real cultural significance (Ramberg & Gjesdal, 6).
It is interesting to note that both Gadamer and Williams subscribe to the idea that science is severely limited in the knowledge acquisition department. It clear to them that there are limitations to the use of scientific principle in acquiring truth. Williams focused more on the use of history as one of the basis for understanding man and his world. For Williams if one will not revisit the past there is no amount of analysis that can be done to yield meaning as to why people in the 20th century behaves that way.
While Williams used historical principles, Gadamer used hermeneutics in showing the world that science no matter how sophisticated will never have the ability to understand context. Sure a robot can read a book but then it will not be able to explain its significance. It will not be able to fully understand the reason why it was written in the first place. Gadamer was correct in saying that human beings acquire knowledge not only from studying and observing the natural world but also by existing in community – it is through this interaction where man learns from others.
Conclusion
It has been pointed out that ever since recorded history man sought for knowledge. But it is not only for the sake of gathering data and storing these in archives. Man sought knowledge and understanding because he wanted to build a better world. He wanted to create a community where he is happy and his loved ones are happy. In this bid to know more about the world around him as well as his fellow human beings he developed a system that can be described as philosophy. If one will agree that religion is part of philosophy then it can be said that for thousands of years man has mastered the art of philosophizing and successful in doing so.
But then after thousands of years of depending on philosophy to reveal the mysteries of the universe, certain radical development altered the course of human history. At the end of the Medieval Age, the major religion of the Western world experienced a crisis. Following shortly Europe experienced the rise of geopolitical nations while at the same time saw the coming of the Age of Enlightenment. Not long afterwards scientists began to gain prominence and began to elbow out philosophers who used to enjoy the adulation of the royals as well as the masses. When the Industrial Revolution came there was a widening gulf between philosophy and the sciences.
Williams was correct in his assertion that there is no need to separate science and philosophy there is a place for science in the encompassing umbrella of philosophy and vice versa. In the analogy created above, in the competition between man and machine, the philosopher went back to headquarters and used computers to help him sort out his data. He was able to find answers to the queries leveled at him but he did not shun technology, in fact he embraced it. While at the same time mindful of its limitations.
Gadamer believes that the same thing should happen to the scientific community. They cannot afford to pretend that they have the only keys to knowledge. Gadamer asserts that scientific tools for acquiring knowledge are severely limited. Sure they can create supercomputers to read Shakespeare’s Hamlet in 3 seconds but it is doubtful if the computer will be able to explain and fully understand the nuances in the play. The computer will never understand why there was a tortured soul, why there is power play, why there is murder and why man is not satisfied. It is only through philosophy where he can uncover the secret behind human behavior therefore the role of philosophy in knowledge acquisition is far from becoming obsolete.
Works Cited
Cicovacki, P. Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity. Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2002.
Hartnack, Justus. Kant’s Theory of Knowledge: Introduction to Critique of Pure Reason. IN: Hacket Publishing, 2001.
Locke, J. & R. Woolhouse. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding. New York: Penguin Books, 1997. Meaning in History: Lecture 1.