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For science, I see how one insight leads to another, and there is a progression which leads to deeper and deeper understanding. And if there never was a Newton,

by mongol 3y ago

For science, I see how one insight leads to another, and there is a progression which leads to deeper and deeper understanding. And if there never was a Newton, gravity would have been described by someone else not too long after. That seems somewhat inevitable to me. But I don't grok philosophy. Is that also a progression of insights in a similar way? Or is it completely arbitrary what philosophical ponderings become important during different human eras?

kuhewa 3y ago
I would think of it more like software development if hardware remained the same rather than science. Yes there are shifts in paradigms based on what the use cases of the day are (and what the perceived shortcomings of the previous paradigm were), and yes there are some things that will be widely agreed to be advancements, also dead ends.
woodruffw 3y ago
Flippantly: science accretes ideas, while philosophy sheds them. In other words: the progression you perceive in science (and mathematics, etc.) has historically occurred because of parallel progressions in philosophy. That has been less true of science for the past century, but it's still very true of mathematics. > Is that also a progression of insights in a similar way? Yes: Western philosophy is a "tradition" in the sense that it has a clear (branching and twisting) lineage from pre-Socratic thought to contemporary philosophy. There are lots of commonly recommended "history of philosophy" books that can provide that overview; Russel's "A History of Western Philosophy" is a commonly recommended one.
keiferski 3y ago
There are more options than “progresses in linear orderly fashion” and “totally arbitrary.” And if you read someone like Kuhn [1] you may question the progressing narrative of science. I’d also be wary of separating scientific insights from philosophical/religious culture. Most famous scientists historically believed themselves to be looking for a divinely-organized system, and it’s unclear to me if they would have even looked in the first place without that underlying belief structure. You could go back even further and say all scientific inquiry basically rests on a conceptual distinction between Self and World, which is very much a trait of Monotheism. I think philosophical insights could roughly be described as a mix of human biological realities (which haven’t really changed, ever) interacting with historical and technological events - and progressing over time in response to those events. Kant, for example, is mostly talking about things that are essentially fundamental to the human experience, even if he was in dialogue with the ideas that were popular in his time. People have argued against Kant, but I don’t think we can really “surpass” the kind of problem he’s investigating in the way you might think we have surpassed an outdated theory of physics. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...
ganzuul 3y ago
Once the language interface exists new generations of ideas transmit and evolve. The emergence of individualism from societies that were collectivist is an example of the magnitude of the significance.

by mongol 3y ago

kuhewa 3y ago

I would think of it more like software development if hardware remained the same rather than science. Yes there are shifts in paradigms based on what the use cases of the day are (and what the perceived shortcomings of the previous paradigm were), and yes there are some things that will be widely agreed to be advancements, also dead ends.

woodruffw 3y ago

Flippantly: science accretes ideas, while philosophy sheds them. In other words: the progression you perceive in science (and mathematics, etc.) has historically occurred because of parallel progressions in philosophy. That has been less true of science for the past century, but it's still very true of mathematics. > Is that also a progression of insights in a similar way? Yes: Western philosophy is a "tradition" in the sense that it has a clear (branching and twisting) lineage from pre-Socratic thought to contemporary philosophy. There are lots of commonly recommended "history of philosophy" books that can provide that overview; Russel's "A History of Western Philosophy" is a commonly recommended one.

keiferski 3y ago

There are more options than “progresses in linear orderly fashion” and “totally arbitrary.” And if you read someone like Kuhn [1] you may question the progressing narrative of science. I’d also be wary of separating scientific insights from philosophical/religious culture. Most famous scientists historically believed themselves to be looking for a divinely-organized system, and it’s unclear to me if they would have even looked in the first place without that underlying belief structure. You could go back even further and say all scientific inquiry basically rests on a conceptual distinction between Self and World, which is very much a trait of Monotheism. I think philosophical insights could roughly be described as a mix of human biological realities (which haven’t really changed, ever) interacting with historical and technological events - and progressing over time in response to those events. Kant, for example, is mostly talking about things that are essentially fundamental to the human experience, even if he was in dialogue with the ideas that were popular in his time. People have argued against Kant, but I don’t think we can really “surpass” the kind of problem he’s investigating in the way you might think we have surpassed an outdated theory of physics. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Re...

ganzuul 3y ago

Once the language interface exists new generations of ideas transmit and evolve. The emergence of individualism from societies that were collectivist is an example of the magnitude of the significance.