Guest Thinkers — January 4, 2011

Did Science Kill Philosophy?

Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics, says Stephen Hawking. But are Hawking’s theoretical ideas not philosophical in their essence?

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Science cannot provide an ultimate explanation of order, says John Haldane, professor of philosophy at St. Andrews University: “As Hawking and Mlodinow occasionally seem to recognize, far from philosophy being dead, having been killed by science, the deepest arguments in this area are not scientific but philosophical. And if the philosophical reasoning runs in the direction I have suggested, it is not only philosophy but also natural theology that is alive and ready to bury its latest would-be undertakers.”

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