Philosophy is not Religion, Religion is not Science, and Science
is not Philosophy.
This is the short version, and now the long version.
Many students confuse these enterprises of human thought and
imagination and see them as similar. I
suppose in some ways they are similar in that each one of them provides tools
as to how one can understand the world.
The contrasts appear weightier, however.
Philosophy
Philosophy presents the task of scrutinizing by asking questions
and in that sense is skeptical in its essence.
By “skeptical” I do not mean asking for the sake of doing so or even
doubting before one is certain.
Instead, the skeptical approach, taken from Sextus Empiricus, is
one of seeking, scrutinizing, and suspending judgement. Rational and phenomenological means are often
the tools here. Questioning is the
essential act of the philosopher.
Verification and falsifiability may not play much of a part
since the questions may be those that do not as yet offer a proof or have
standards of disproof.
As others have noted, however, when there is an answer to a
philosophical question, it then becomes a field of Science.
Religion
Does Religion employ such a view?
This may be a part of the religious view, one may scrutinize any belief,
but much of the religious approach is about relating to the supernatural
world. The re-ligio of the Latin term, the “re-tying” oneself to an
otherworldly reality, however construed, is essential.
This may involve a number of actions whether prayer, ritual, or
spontaneous acts of devotion. The
devotional act is the work of the religious person.
In this case, one may employ intuitive means and some rational
attitude to understand it. There may
even be an empirical view of sorts to it but that is restricted to anecdotal
evidence.
Theologians, usually in Western religions, may offer various
proofs of their belief but these lack empirical testing and either are
tautologies or are non-falsifiable. The
ontological proof, for instance, builds upon a tautology.
Science
Science is closer to the philosophical view but takes in a more
empirical approach. The “scientific
method” does engage rational means of preparation but, ultimately, it must pass
the empirical test.
The scientific experiment is likely the essence of this approach. If the experiment fails repeatedly, then that
is a disproof of whatever hypothesis was the catalyst for it.
Where one encounters the problem of non-falsifiability is in
theoretical discussion of a scientific field.
There is some overlap though with rational discussion through
mathematical means. For instance, in the
history of modern physics a mathematical model preceded the experimental
finding of the phenomenon.
Two instances that come to mind are the examples of relativity and
anti-matter. In both instances a
physicist, whether Einstein or Dirac, followed where the math was leading and
discovered that, mathematically, relativity or anti-matter were a part of the
world.
Concluding Comparison
The work of Philosophy is to question values, and a skeptical view
is its approach. Religion has the task
of affirming the value of a relation to a supernatural world, and devotion is
its venue. Science presents the
instruments to test values, and experimentation is its main tool.
In this light, it is intriguing that people try to put all of
these endeavors in the same arena, as if a philosopher, a priest, and a
scientist go about similar tasks when they are not even aiming at the same
goal.
A philosopher, a priest, and a scientist walk into a bar. The philosopher asked, “Why are we here?” The scientist stated, “Because we are
thirsty.” The priest replied, “Praise
the Lord!”
