The question of whether nature is inherently obscure, by its own constitution or by the inherent limitations of knowledge, is a philosophical question.  Science in its history has had to develop philosophical positions on many such issues:  what counts as objective knowledge; what is the role and the limits of methodical deduction; the role and limits of observation, experiment and induction; the role of the investigator in the constitution of experience; and the question of whether thought can be reduced to a natural object.  There is no scientific reason to suppose that these issues have been resolved.  They remain open to revision and refinement despite the most confident re-assertions of factual authority.  And they are philosophical questions no matter what answers are proposed, no matter whether they are framed in explicit metaphysics, dispassionate technicalities, or implicit assumptions.

A philosophical system is subject to criticism and development, whereas a system of alleged facts is impervious to challenge by its critics, and beyond question by its adherents.  The often strident denial that science is a philosophy appears like nothing so much as an attempt to strengthen scientific claims by raising them to a level of authority and hegemony.  It’s difficult to see how such a program could be justified by anything but a felt imperative to reinforce and protect science against an insecurity of repute, and it’s difficult to see how it could lead in a consistently constructive direction. 

If philosophy is the endeavor to understand the not-divine and not-mystical world, then science is a branch of philosophy, distinctive only in the way it seeks to exclude speculation, relativism, and contemplation.  Science, just the same as other philosophies, is a system of rational (and always questionable) beliefs about nature.  In all the ways that science arose as a negativity toward earlier world-views, science has been a philosophical perspective, and in consequence, an effective supervisory approach to technique. 

Given the distinction between science and technique, the long-standing controversy over whether the “inexact sciences” – sociology, psychology, economics, and the like – should be considered true sciences can be seen as a question only of whether and to what extent effective scientific techniques are possible in those fields.  The adherence of such putative sciences to scientific philosophy, in the mainstream at least, is beyond question.  A recognized social science is one that embraces the scientific world-view and attempts, however successfully, to bring social phenomena within scientific understanding, and seeks to apply scientific technique to develop acceptable categorizations and hypotheses. 

The “philosophy of science” as it is generally understood, given the definition of science offered here, would be better described as another social science, the science of scientific technique, or maybe less awkwardly, as science methodology.  Where science as a philosophy studies nature as-such, and the fundamental relationship between knowing and nature, science methodology is primarily the study of scientists in the process of theory-making, theory-meaning, theory-consolidation, and theory-application, an examination of how scientific practice has come to be successful and useful. 

Only secondarily do scientific studies of science touch on, much less discriminate and evaluate philosophical beliefs.  The nomination “philosophy” to distinguish the examination of scientific behavior from more immediately technical concerns seems to have been appropriated as if the term was lying at-hand without useful employment.  But studies of the behaviors of microbes, mass-murderers, and economies are not philosophy – why should the study of scientists be so? The study of politics isn’t political philosophy at the level of the how and when – it’s considered political science.  Science methodology is the how of science, whereas scientific philosophy is the what.  When science methodology asks:  How do we form hypotheses? How do we verify? How do we reach consensus? How is science successful? The answers largely depend on the more or less implicit whats of scientific philosophy:  What is called knowing? What is nature, what is not? What is the reliable scope of theories about the relationship between knowing and nature?

Science is already philosophy.  The “philosophy of science” is for the most part not philosophy in the conventional sense of the term, but rather, an application of scientific technique, like sociology and psychology, an application where the object of study is scientific behavior and accomplishment, treated as objects of nature.  Science is a system of beliefs about the world and our place within it; science methodology is the study of how those beliefs are applied and the evaluation of results achieved.

When viewed historically, and when fully distinguished from technique and methodology, science can be seen quite clearly as a series of philosophical positions on the relation of knowing to nature, as variations on the fundamental scientific perspective on objectivity and the proper means of theoretical and technical validation. 

A number of distinct philosophies can be briefly described in this space, if only for illustration.  Aristotle was evidently the first to establish an actual science, although in his innovative negativity toward earlier world-views his was, understandably in hindsight, quite naïve.  Aristotle conceived of science as a development of rigorously logical, comprehensive classifications and discursive proofs by deduction.  He inquired into the full range of human interests, but was careful to separate his science from his own speculation and contemplation.  However impressive his work now appears as a historical and cultural achievement, it proved indefensible in the presumption of a conformance of nature to logical ideals.  A new form of scepticism emerged in opposition to ideal premises and deductive proofs, at least as applied to nature.  In consequence, Ockham and others were inspired to develop a detached and inductive approach that presumed a fundamental difference between a dis-integral, chaotic world and the formal impositions of knowing.  Galileo, and other scientists influenced by Renaissance humanism, reaffirmed the affinity of reason and nature as epitomized by mathematics, but with a refined appreciation for the need to submit hypotheses to empirical verification.  With Locke and his followers, knowing was assimilated as a natural process, an abstraction from natural experience, and the foregoing dualism between reason and nature was believed to have been resolved; the mental as a realm apart from nature has subsequently been reduced by mainstream science to the status of a meaningless mystical construct.  With Hume, the presumed realism of Locke’s empiricism was repudiated, and after a devastating exposition of empirical scepticism, he turned to a more tentative, equivocal, pragmatic approach to knowledge.  Pragmatism has been found by many scientists to be unsatisfactory, if only for being insufficently authoritative, and many have opted for a return to some earlier (scientific) philosophy, or to some combination of several.  Today, much of science can be described as an eclectic and more-or-less tacit admixture of past scientific philosophies.  But whether adhered to in pure form or in some combination, every scientific philosophy has expressed the same general regard for nature relative to the pre-scientific world-views, while varying in the appreciation of knowledge and technique.

Science has been described as a natural philosophy, a philosophy of the methodical, objective investigation of the natural world, and a supervision of professional technique, developed out of a recognition of the inappropriate intrusions of earlier forms of thought and practice on the discovery of nature.

The positive aspects of science have been shown to be implicated by the negative.  Science is not-religious, therefore, science is naturalistic.  Science is not-mystical, therefore, science is realistic.  Science is not-speculative, therefore, science is corroborative.  Science is not-relativistic and not-contemplative, therefore, science is objective. 

The definition of science offered here is contextual and historical, rooted in its original and developing conditions.  Given this definition and the resolution from technique and methodology, the general description of the scientific world-view can be seen to accommodate all the particular scientific philosophies as variant perspectives on the bounds of nature and knowing, and the proper role and application of technique, from Aristotle to the present time. 

The scope of this paper has been confined to a general resolution of science, technique, and philosophy.  If these classifications are valid, the close identification of science with technique has exaggerated the importance of isolated facts, as experienced in the absorption in immediate interactions with natural objects; the denial of the philosophical basis of science has inhibited a full awareness of presumptions, resulting in varying degrees of bias, disregard, and disorientation.  If this is to be the situation, then science as conjoined with technique and cut-off from explicit philosophy can only become less vigorous, and more peculiar.  A more temperate, self-conscious and pragmatic scientific philosophy would be a more effective catalyst for discovery.

Notes

1 “…a detailed causal tracing of atomic processes is impossible…” Bohr, N. (1934), "The Quantum of Action and the Description of Nature” (1929) in Atomic Theory and the Description of Nature, University Press, London, p100.

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