What is science in the light of the genetic circle?
Posted: Sat Feb 29, 2020 6:52 pm
1. Science (episteme) is first purposed as a subject matter by the early Greek philosophers. Thus, as distinct from, or determined against, everything else, is endowed to man and his outlook by philosophic thinking.
2. However, the genetic circle is more difficult. Since, the common sense meaning of "science" (namely, a specific qualified form of the western thinking, experimental science linked to general formulation of laws) is what we grow into in our youth before we can think. It, however, has neither a theoretical nor an empirical meaning at first. It is simply "science" as we use the word naturally and perhaps even in contradistinction to philosophy and art.
3. The meaning of science for people born after 1900 in the English speaking countries differs radically from what it meant for the Western tradition. In America, the inventor (e.g., Edison) was for the longest time more prestigious than the scientist, who was a mere calculator and theorizer largely despised by the pragmatic spirit of the country. In this sense, until well beyond WW1 the scientist and the philosopher were identical in the public imagination (as useless idiots).
4. Where do we start? Which is the starting point? Growing into the meaning as infants learning to speak? Or, on the other hand, the history of western philosophy understood as the progressive thinking through as the theory of objects until it becomes a demand for mere "facts" in contradistinction to science or knowledge as historically understood? At the moment science becomes a mere art, or empirical endeavor, it ceases to bestow anything human onto the human being, and becomes objective.
2. However, the genetic circle is more difficult. Since, the common sense meaning of "science" (namely, a specific qualified form of the western thinking, experimental science linked to general formulation of laws) is what we grow into in our youth before we can think. It, however, has neither a theoretical nor an empirical meaning at first. It is simply "science" as we use the word naturally and perhaps even in contradistinction to philosophy and art.
3. The meaning of science for people born after 1900 in the English speaking countries differs radically from what it meant for the Western tradition. In America, the inventor (e.g., Edison) was for the longest time more prestigious than the scientist, who was a mere calculator and theorizer largely despised by the pragmatic spirit of the country. In this sense, until well beyond WW1 the scientist and the philosopher were identical in the public imagination (as useless idiots).
4. Where do we start? Which is the starting point? Growing into the meaning as infants learning to speak? Or, on the other hand, the history of western philosophy understood as the progressive thinking through as the theory of objects until it becomes a demand for mere "facts" in contradistinction to science or knowledge as historically understood? At the moment science becomes a mere art, or empirical endeavor, it ceases to bestow anything human onto the human being, and becomes objective.