- David Christopher Lane
My teacher, David Christopher Lane, argues that “philosophy done well is science and philosophy done poorly is. . . well, philosophy.” I find this quote ironic because philosophy is the study of problems such as how and why we exist, how the universe came about, or anything that should be experimented on in order to be explained. The statement made by my teacher expresses that science helps prove why things may occur in our lives which is what philosophy is the study of. Philosophy done poorly is….well Philosophy,” meaning that even if it is a theory about every humans being created by a bunch of crickets is still a theory that was put together to solve a problem of the unknown.
The advantage with doing a philosophy predicated on science is that your solution to a problem would be more reliable to others. In order for your theory to be conducted scientifically you must first follow the scientific method. So in philosophy predicated on science the scientist or philosopher would ask a question, predict and outcome, test their predicament, and create a theory. Edward O. Wilson’s Consilience is an example of philosophy predicated on science, Edward invented the term Sociobiology, a field of scientific study which is based on the assumption that social behavior has resulted from evolution and attempts to explain and examine social behavior within that context. Often considered a branch of biology and sociology, it also draws from ethnology, anthropology, evolution, zoology, archaeology, population genetics, and other disciplines. Within the study of human societies, sociobiology is very closely allied to the fields of Darwinian anthropology, human behavioral ecology and evolutionary psychology. (Wikipedia)
The more traditional route of philosophy is to create a theory to a solution without the use of the scientific method and if the scientific method was use a theory was created even if it cannot be proven. For example the Big Bang Theory was said to explain how the universe came into existence and though it cannot be proven a theory was made. The drawback to a purely scientific endeavor is that thought scientist may do all the research and cannot find an answer they tend to assume one.
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