Science and Philosophy
“It is often accurate that the physicist makes, in his science, the greater progress the more he can consider his method as evident. There are times, however, when your method fails, in case difficulties in principle require a revision of methods that until then were considered safe. In moments like these, the scientist becomes a philosopher of nature.” - (Heinemann 2014).
What is science? What is it about? What assumptions is it based on? What is the basis of the scientific method? These and many other questions like this one inhabit the central plane of what we call philosophy. It is responsible for the search of the foundations of modern science, calling into question how results are obtained, the methods used, and scientific purposes.
Whenever, in the history of mankind, there is a scientific revolution, the fall of a model of thought, and the construction of a new methodology, it is up to the philosophy of science to rethink the new social implications and address the difficulties inherent in the ideological crisis that necessarily triggers the change of a scientific paradigm.
It is precisely within a context of ideological crisis that the discourse carried out in the work The Turning Point by the physicist Fritjof Capra is found. Taking as a starting point the dramatic conceptual change that physics underwent in the first three decades of the twentieth century, namely, with the introduction of the study of the atomic and subatomic world (Capra 1982, 15) that comes to question the empirical reality, the author appeals to need to reformulate the method in which the sciences have been framed since the eighteenth century to the present day. The main objective of his work is to investigate the causes and effects of the predominance of a reductionist model, as he considers it to be the Cartesian model. Due to its investigative and questioning nature, The Turning Point is a truly philosophical work, which leads the reader through the historical adventure of knowledge and humanity, based on cosmological hypotheses from Eastern philosophy ideals and culminating in the need to establish a new holistic and ecological paradigm in the sciences.
A crucial point in Fritjof Capra's argument is the negative view of the separation of sciences in fragmented branches that truly dissect the complex whole that is the living being (Capra 1982, 132, 164, 266). For the truly scientific study, an integrative view of reality is necessary because only then will we be able to face the "systemic problems" that govern our current society (Capra 1982, 25).
But even before we approach the problems that govern reality and science, we will have to ask ourselves what reality is and how it can be known. And this philosophical question, which dates back to the beginnings of philosophy in Greece in the 6th century BC, is by far the oldest human question. "What is all this about?" it was the central question that occupied the pioneering theories of the pre-Socratic philosophers (7th-5th century BC), Socrates (469-399 BC), and the two exponents of Greek thought, Plato (428-347 BC) and Aristotle (384-322 BC). All of them can also be called philosophers of nature, or naturalists since they looked for the essence, the basic substance, or the nature of the world (Kirk, Raven, Schofield 2013,71).
You are wrong if you think that the questioning of what reality is isn't intimately connected with the beginnings of science as we know it today. The first major dispute in the world of philosophy goes precisely in this direction. In the famous painting called Scuola di Atene by the Italian painter Rafael, where we can find the most famous thinkers up to that time, it is possible to glimpse that same dispute that involved Plato, represented on the left, pointing upwards, and Aristotle, on the right, pointing down to the earth.
For Plato, as Aristotle's teacher, the reality is an enormous illusion and the truth of the world is not even accessible to men, but on the divine plane, where everything is perfect and immutable and that's why Rafael paints Plato pointing upwards towards the truth (Plato 2011). On the other hand, for Aristotle, the reality was capable of being known by the senses of man, it was capable of being studied, and classified, the truth is earthly and can be unveiled precisely through science, hence he is represented pointing to the earth. We owe Aristotle the first biological investigations, in the broadest sense of the term, and we can, with good reason, appoint him as the first of scientists. It is also to Aristotle that we owe the division between the natural sciences and the mathematical sciences, with the former aiming to study what he called "matter" and the latter the "form" (Aristotle 2010), i.e., the two natures existing in all living beings.
This gap between heaven and earth has been, throughout the history of knowledge, worsened, in such a way that science has come to our days completely removed from any spiritual and intuitive nature, divided into fragmented disciplines that still sin today by the lack of transdisciplinarity, without the possibility of studying the living organism in all its facets-physical, biological, psychological, social, and cultural (Capra 1982, 265). It is precisely this enormous task that Capra wants to carry out, namely, the ideal marriage between science and philosophy.
For this, the author advances, in the last part of his work, his systemic theory, which he calls "the systems view of life", which is based on the notion of interrelation and interdependence of all phenomena of reality, which aims to understand life and any organism as a dynamic and living system - possessing flexibility and plasticity - and not as a machine that can be deconstructed and analyzed by its parts - as postulated by the Cartesian model (Capra 1982).
Thus, the crucial principle underlying this theory is the “principle of self-organization” (Capra 1982) according to which the organization and structure of a living system, or an organism, is given by himself and not by any attempt to adapt abroad - contrary to what we can find in the Darwinian thesis. Associated with this ordering principle are also two types of phenomena: the phenomenon of self-renewal, i.e., the ability to recycle the components of a system without losing its integrity; and the phenomenon of self-transcendence, which corresponds to a creative ability to overcome its own physical and mental field, as is the case of learning, evolution, and development (Capra 1982).
As the author himself indicates, there is a need for a transformation not only scientific but also social and a need for public re-education to look at the world from a holistic and integrative point of view. This change needs, above all, philosophy, i.e., a fundamental questioning of what science is and what has it been until now.
Fritjof Capra is the scientist who became a philosopher of nature and his ultimate appeal as a thinker is that all the scientists and aspiring scientists should also be somewhat philosophers.
Fig.1- Raphael's Athens School
Bibliography:
Capra, F., The Turning Point, 6ª ed. (New York, 1982).
Heinemann, F., A Filosofia No Século XX, 8ª ed. (Lisbon, 2014).
Plato, O Sofista, 1ª ed. (Lisbon, 2011).
Aristotle, Física I-II. (São Paulo, 2010).
About the Author...
Inês Silveira Reis, a portugese girl with 23 years old. She has made her degree in Philosophy at Faculty of Letters, University of Lisbon and is currently finishing her master degree in Human Ecology at Faculty of Social and Human Sciences, New University of Lisbon. She has an article published in the online journal called Philosophy@lisbon about Hannah Arendt and her concept of time. In 2017 she has participated in the program Erasmus+ in Rome, Italy and studied philosophy in La Sapienza. Often does environmental volunteering.
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