We’ll Always Need Philosophy

I think one reason why we will always need philosophy, and why science won’t ever surpass it in terms of usefulness (not practicality, but usefulness) is that philosophy can’t be bought.

Here’s what I mean by that. With science, and hard, observable discoveries, there is always the chance that your work can be corrupted somehow. Edited, changed, or otherwise modified to make it say something it doesn’t. Usually for political or economic gain.

But philosophy is just smart dudes swapping ideas about life, death, and everything in between. When there is no space for economics and money, there is no room for bribery. There are no results to edit, or to fabricate.

Logic and epistemology can be countered by other logic and epistemology, and then we just do it over again.

You never hear about philosophers being bought out to big [insert anything].

But you do with scientists and theologians.

To clarify, science has this funny thing where if enough scientists claim a thing to be true, and produce seemingly passable papers or essays, the theory becomes generally accepted as hard fact, and life then works now through that newly discovered lens.

You don’t have that with philosophy. Nobody listened to Kant’s essays in philosophy symposiums, where he presented the findings of deontology, and other philosophers in attendance said “well, that looks good. I guess we all do philosophy from the point of view of deontology, now.”

But we do that in science. Enough scientists get together to convince the rest that we are in a heliocentric universe, and then it no longer is questioned. (I am not questioning that particular fact, as I am not qualified. Just using it as an example.)

Another example is Newtonian to Einsteinian physics. An idea is given sufficient weight by either enough scientists in that field to be significant, or a single mind can carry that weight, and the theory becomes virtually unopposed.