Understanding the Foundations of Philosophy and Science
1. The Philosophical Knowledge: Experience acquired through thinking. Philosophy is the process of using reason to critically and rigorously understand the fundamental structure of reality and reason.
2. Evolution of the Term “Science”: The modern notion of science emerged during the Renaissance, a period known as the Scientific Revolution. This is when science and philosophy began to diverge. Certain particular sciences, especially those of an empirical nature, such as physics and astronomy, became organized, determining their specific characteristics and methodological design. The two elements that differentiate scientific knowledge from philosophical experience are testing and the application of mathematics to the study of reality. An experiment is understood as a set of activities properly planned with the help of mathematical formulas aimed at discovering how things behave.
3. Method of Formal Sciences: The formal sciences do not refer to facts of experience but to the structure of reasoning. They are governed by their own internal coherence and have two main applications. The two methods used in the sciences are deduction and induction. Deduction is the process of reasoning that leads from one or more given propositions, called premises, to another proposition, known as the logical consequence or conclusion. An example of this is chess.
– Axioms: These are fundamental principles that are not demonstrable within the system or are selected for their evident truth. For example, “the whole is greater than the part” and “a point outside a line can only draw a parallel.”
– Rules: These allow for the extraction of new valid sentences to expand the system. For example, the rules must be followed to add new elements.
– Theorems: These are statements obtained deductively from axioms or other already demonstrated theorems. An example is the Pythagorean theorem.
4. Hypothetico-Deductive Method: The statements expressed in this method relate to world phenomena that can be recorded empirically. They set goals and communicate unequivocally. For example, “pens suspended in space fall due to gravity.”
The laws are universal statements that express the behavior or relationship of specific events on a regular and invariable basis. Before a universal statement can be considered verified, experience must confirm it; if it does, it becomes a law. A classic example is the law of gravity: “All masses in the universe attract each other with a force that is directly proportional to their product and inversely proportional to the square of their distance.”
Theories are universal statements from which all laws of a particular science can be deduced. They can lead to the discovery of new laws. An example is the theory of relativity.
5. Origin of the History of Philosophy: Mythos and Logos: Western philosophy was born in Greece, specifically in Miletus (Asia Minor), in the 6th century BC. Its birth is related to a change in the way of explaining everyday phenomena, known as a shift to logos. Mythos and logos are expressions that can be translated from Greek as “word.” However, mythos refers to fantastic narratives that attempt to explain the origin of the cosmos and often resort to superhuman forces or personified cosmic powers.
The admiration and surprise arise against a mysterious world, which raises all sorts of questions.
6. Empirico-Rational Method: The first level of reality consists of data provided by the senses. According to this data, reality is multiple and changing. However, through understanding, we conceive something permanent that changes in reality through intuition and reasoning. The second level of reality is what things are and what makes them explicit. Our understanding consists of concepts or ways of being, and the level of status among these concepts has the primacy of substance, which is the basic substrate of each specific thing. This understanding grasps that there is something permanent, something that does not change, and that acts as a support (substrate, substance) for all changes occurring in things.