Has science replaced philosophy?

Transcript

This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question, in the age of science, do we need philosophy? Answer, there are two distinct branches of knowledge and one does not necessarily replace another. Consider for example, scientific advancement. Science started off as a search for natural explanations for natural phenomena.
That is called as methodological naturalism. From there, to move towards metaphysical naturalism, which holds that actually everything in this world is just natural or all that exists is simply natural or material and there is nothing beyond that. That is not a scientific statement, it is not a scientific claim, it is a metaphysical claim.
So, science can only explain to us the observed correlations between, the observed or inferred correlations between the natural phenomena in this world. It cannot explain whether anything exists beyond this world and also cannot explain why these correlations exist in the first place. If any explanations are given by scientists, these are philosophical explanations, they are not scientific explanations.
So, philosophy broadly talks about the nature of reality, whereas science looks at reality with particular assumptions and then tries to explain that model of reality. So, it assumes that in this world there are, that natural phenomena have natural explanations and that these natural explanations are enough to explain the natural phenomena and that there are no supernatural factors involved. So, when Newton saw the fruit falling, he assumed that a material mechanism was adequate for explaining it.
First of all, that a material mechanism explained it and the material mechanism was adequate. And these are philosophical assumptions. And we say, no, they work, so it is not an assumption, it is a truth.
Yeah, we may say it is a truth based on the observations we have made, but it is a truth based on a certain worldview, that is a certain philosophy. And whether anything exists beyond this world, beyond the natural world that science tries to correlate with its laws and where these laws come from are metaphysical questions which are vital for the completeness of the picture of the world that science gives us. Without such an explanation, we are left with an assumption.
It is like, we come to a well-ordered house and we press a button and a fan starts, we press another button and a heater starts. And we are availing of those facilities and we are discovering what which button means. But that does not explain where these mechanisms came from.
And if we just wake up and find ourselves in a house, then finding the correlations between whatever happens in that house does not demonstrate, does not in any way prove whether anything exists outside the house or not. So, first of all, there are certain assumptions that science makes while observing, while going about its business of studying nature. And those assumptions are not scientific, they are philosophical.
And there are many scientists who make statements about these also. So, for example, scientists talk about whether anything exists beyond nature and how the laws of nature as we observed them came about. So, when they try to observe them, at that time, the essential principle is that they are trying to infer and whether that inference is logically sound or logically suspect is something which needs to be investigated.
And that can be philosophically critiqued because they are doing philosophy. So, for example, some scientists propose the multiverse theory. And they say that, for example, Stephen Hawking in his book, The Grand Design saying that because the law of gravity existed, the universe can and did indeed create itself.
Now, this raises the question, first of all, why did the law of gravity exist at all? If we are beginning with nothing, then the law of gravity is certainly not nothing. And if we only say that the universe can and will create itself, a cause that creates itself is logically questionable at the very least. What religion proposes is that there is an uncaused cause, not that a cause that creates itself.
Cause has to exist before it can create anything. So, a child does not create itself. Parents have to exist for the child to come.
So, saying that a cause that the universe creates itself is logically senseless. Now, again, if we look at the multiverse theory, it is not something which is empirically ever observable. The multiverse theory says that there are infinite number of universes.
Now, one challenge when science studies nature is that there is some overall regularity in the universe and there is some specific fine tuning in the universe. The overall regularity is referred to how nature is arranged to follow laws. And the fact that it follows laws itself is significant.
But even more significant is that the laws are of such a nature that the fundamental constants that underlie those laws are of such a nature that they allow for our existence. Without those laws, we would not be able to exist. Without those laws, not just laws, but without those laws having specific values.
So, if for example, laws having certain constants. If for example, the relationship between the four fundamental forces, the nuclear strong force, the nuclear weak force, the gravitational force, electromagnetic force. If these were not the way they are, I won’t go into technicalities over here.
Even if these forces existed, even if these laws made sure that they existed, unless they had specific values, there would be no possibility of any existence. So, certainly human life would not exist. Much of other life would also not exist.
So, what this means is f is equal to g m1 m2 m upon r square. This is a law of motion. So, law of gravity rather.
So, now first the question comes up, why does the universe have a kind of regularity by which it exhibits this law? But now, even if we assume that this is a law, you know, why is g of a particular value? That is a constant and that constant shapes a lot of factors. Scientists say that if these constants would not have been the way they were, then we wouldn’t have existed to ask the question. Yes, that is true, but that doesn’t still answer the question.
If we wake up one consciousness and we find that we are hungry and there is abundant food there, then while eating the food or after eating the food, we wonder where did this food come from? And we could very well say if the food didn’t exist, then we wouldn’t have existed. We would be dead and we wouldn’t be asking the question. Yes, just because the pre-existence of existence is essential for the existence of observers who question the existence of the existence.
That doesn’t mean the existence of existence is already explained. It still requires an explanation. And we may say that there are unlimited universes and one of them, all these constants work out to be the way they are.
Well, that might seem to be an explanation if we postulate infinite universes, but then still that in itself is not an adequate explanation because the question that arises is even if there are multiple infinite universes, are we sure that all these universes are equally probable? Are all these universes, what is the guarantee that these universes themselves, if we say that all infinite universes are equally probable, then the question comes up, then what is the probability that we would exist in a particular universe? We may say that if we throw 6 dice, a dice 6 times, then one of them following 6 is a natural probability. Yes, that is true, but still that doesn’t explain why this particular dice fell as 6. If we say that a dice was thrown 6 times, then one of them will naturally fall 6. Yes, but still which dice will fall 6, the probability of that still remains 1 6th. So, if there is 6 throws, only one of them will fall as 6. So, which one, we can’t say and for any one of them to fall as 6, the probability still remains 1 6th.
Similarly, if we consider that the universe has so many inexplicable natural regularities and specific fine tuning, then we may say that all the infinite universes, then one of them this could be possible. Even if we assume for the sake that there are infinite universes, now this is not itself will come to the incoherence of that, the unprovability of that idea, but even if we assume there are infinite universes, still the question remains, why would a particular universe have those particular characteristics? Those characteristics could be present in any one of those universes, not just in the particular universe we would have been in. So, then we may say now whichever is the universe in which those characteristics are present, that is the universe in which we would evolve.
But then, that still begs the question that we happen to be in this particular universe and therefore, the question remains, why are we in a universe where the order is there? Now, when we use infinite parallel universes to explain these, the question arises that what do we mean by multi-universes? That are they unobservable regions of our own universe, extensions of the same spatio-temporal causal continuum? No, if they are, then they would also exhibit the same regularity, whose orderliness, whose explanation is what we are looking for and if there are entirely distinct realities, wholly discontinuous and sharing no common elements, then there can be no empirical evidence for that. If we are to observe something about someone, there has to be some connection between us and them. So, if there is no connection, there cannot be any observation and we cannot derive the existence of the other universes as a necessary condition and especially not just necessary condition, because this universe has these conditions, therefore, of the possible existence character of the only universe which we know.
So, or we can have scientific knowledge about is the universe we have. So, now from the existence of this universe, the existence of parallel universes is at best a questionable hypothesis, is by no way a necessary condition. So, therefore, what results is that, so the general regularity in the particular finite universe that we see in the universe, it still requires an explanation and those who, in philosophy there is a magazine that philosophy always buries its undertakers, those who say that philosophy is dead eventually they themselves die.
So, that same thing has happened over here, when people claim that science has replaced philosophy. What happens is, scientists end up doing philosophy and scientists are not trained as philosophers and thus they end up making philosophically illogical claims and claiming that this is what science says when actually science doesn’t say anything of that sort. Thank you.
Hare Krishna.