An essay to try to understand why the human kind has so much difficulty to evolve towards better models… In our current world, two main potential streams are co-existing at the same time: the material and the immaterial reigns. Both have proponents and opponents. But looking around, it seems that the material aspect of our lives is driving us with much more power than the immaterial ways we could engage ourselves in.
Why is it so that science dominates the world and philosophy is just the apanach of some intellectuals. Why are we so much averse to spirituality and so incline to the ambient consumerism? Science tends more and more to rule the world. Most of us perceive today the need of something else, but we have much difficulties to trust in ourselves to make a decision on the direction to take.
To me, a philosophy cannot exist by its own. It needs a support to express its point of view. It needs a context and substances. Without these a given philosophy wouldn’t become live. This means that a philosophy grows, evolves, changes and becomes obsolete as the evolution of the ecosystem in which it lives in. A new context will require a new interpretation of a philosophical point of view. A philosophy is like a painting of a given expression which would be modified pending of the dominant style of the epoch in which it is drawn.
By contrast, science is “true” forever. Science is like an infinite puzzle. Each piece has its own space and place. One can either increase the resolution of each piece and get more knowledge about a very narrow and specialized field, or one can learn about a side effect of the current knowledge and extend the puzzle a bit further. Through the years, since the man was given the possibility to reflect, science confirms theories or hypothesis and explores its borders and gaps.
While philosophy would superpose new color layers on the same painting through the ages, science is building a piece of art which has an infinite lifetime and an infinite reach. While each new generation has to reflect, confirm or build a new philosophy of life, science is trusted and accepted as is because of its perpetuity. Therefore our civilizations are so much inclined to live in a material world rather than in a spiritual space. And it takes something like 50 years to every human to realize this fact. Meaning that, for each new generation, science gets a 50 years bonus development time versus the philosophy evolution.
In scientific words, science evolution is exponential while philosophy evolves linearly with time. I strongly believe that if our philosophical knowledge and acceptance would be at the level of the science one, we would live in a far better and peaceful world.
Enjoy!
Disclaimer: I am not by far an expert in philosophy while I have some knowledge in science. So any learning is welcomed 🙂
For a discussion on a related topic (philosophy versus science) see the following article from The Observer dated September 2012.