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To: Coyoteman; Alamo-Girl; hosepipe; curiosity; metmom
Perhaps you're right, but science has moved on while in many ways philosophy has not. Philosophers seem to still be fighting the same issues they were 2,500 years ago.

Perhaps that's because certain universal issues haven't changed in 2,500 years. Science really hasn't any way of "changing" them, in the sense of bringing them to conclusions.

But philosophers don't "fight" issues. (I am beginning to detest the usage of words such as "fight," "struggle," etc., etc., so beloved of our socially progressive would-be world-changers....) Philosophers simply recognize that there are perennially open questions that need to be left open. All answers posed to them must in principle be considered provisional; contingent, not conclusive.

Questions like: Where did the world come from? What is life and death? What is knowledge? Why are things the way they are, and not some other way? Why is there anything at all, why not nothing? These are not scientific questions, though they ultimately lie at the very root of science....

The reason they are "open" questions is because the scientific method has no way to "close" them. Remember, the scientific method can deal only with phenomena capable of direct observation — that is, "detectable by human or machine sensors in observer time." To "close" philosophy's open questions would mean that the observer would have to stand outside of spacetime, to know not only the whole present, but the whole future as well as the whole past. And this no human observer can ever do.

Of course, it's entirely possible that questions like these have no appeal, no attraction for you. In which case, I'd wonder why....

Thanks for the ping, Coyoteman!

110 posted on 04/30/2008 1:27:19 PM PDT by betty boop (This country was founded on religious principles. Without God, there is no America. -- Ben Stein)
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To: betty boop
Thank you so very much for your outstanding essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!

To "close" philosophy's open questions would mean that the observer would have to stand outside of spacetime, to know not only the whole present, but the whole future as well as the whole past. And this no human observer can ever do.

So very true!

Man cannot achieve certain knowledge by the scientific method.

135 posted on 04/30/2008 9:07:41 PM PDT by Alamo-Girl
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