Austėja Baušaitė, Anželika Šaškovaitė, Natali Dagytė, Agnietė Žiūkaitė, Agneta

Butkutė, Jonas Pakutka

Philosophy of
science
 Content

01 02 03
What is philosophy of Ancient Greek Richard Rorty
science? philosophy

04 05
Science and
Science and religion
philosophy
 What is philosophy of science?

• The philosophy of science is a type of philosophy that uses assumptions,

foundations, methods and implications of science. This philosophy sometimes
connects metaphysics, ontology and epistemology, when it explores if the
scientific result has a study of truth. Also, many philosophers of science think
about the problems that have particular sciences, for example: philosophy of
biology or philosophy of physics. Sometimes, philosophers of science use
modern day results in science to reach different conclusions in philosophy
What is philosophy of science?

When it comes to the prehistory of the

philosophy of science, it was always met
with mixed responses from the community
of science. Scientists often contribute to the
field, but often find that the practical part of
their work is rarely limited.
 Philosophy and science by Ancient Greece

• The ancient Greeks didn't make a distinction between philosophy and

science, nor did they recognize the range of disciplines such as physics,
chemistry, mathematics, astronomy, etc. that we do today.
• There simply wasn't the depth of knowledge and range of information
that later made separate disciplines practical. 
• Even before the word „science“ truly got its meaning, ancient Greeks
were still equally famous for their contributions to “natural
philosophy”, the bundle of inquiries now designated as sciences. 

Source: Corcoran, F. Greece: Secrets of the Past. Canadian Museum of History. https://www.historymuseum.ca
 Philosophy and science by Ancient Greece

• Ancient Greece started what is now called Western philosophy. It

included the problems of philosophy as they are understood
today; but it also included many other disciplines, such as pure
mathematics and natural sciences such as physics, astronomy,
and biology. 
• Aristotle was the first great biologist. 
• Pythagoras - a mathematician. 
• Plato - contributed to ethics, cosmology and metaphysics. 
• Thales - an astronomer.

Source: Dietrich, K. P. (2022). Ancient Philosophy and Science. University of Pittsburgh.

https://www.classics.pitt.edu
 Richard Rorty
Richard McKay Rorty was born on October 4, 1931 in New
York City.
He is an American pragmatist philosopher and public
intellectual noted for his wide-ranging critique of the modern
conception of philosophy as a scientific enterprise aimed at
reaching certainty and objective truth.
He held teaching positions at Yale University from 1954 to
1956, Wellesley College from 1958 to 1961, Princeton
University from 1961 to 1982, and the University of Virginia
since 1982. In addition, he has held many visiting positions.
 Science and religion

• While some literary critics of this era spoke of the death of

the author and some theologians of the death of God, Richard
Rorty argued for the end of philosophy as we know it. It can no
longer be understood as advanced science, but rather has become
a "companion of literature and culture".

• According to Rorty, each theory has truth, therefore there is no

final truth, in fact, there’s a variety of multi-truths. That is why 
      Rorty believed that there is a conflict between science and religion.
 Science and religion
• Rorty‘s criticisms of science are as follows: science consists of the 
      efforts to learn the truth about how things are by forcing us to be 
      constrained in our beliefs of the world. He also believed that science 
      is useless for philosophical purposes.

• When it comes to religion, Rorty claims that advances in modern 
      science have made belief in God irrational. However, he was hopeful 
      in religion as a tool to make society politically better and so a better 
      approach would be to reform it so it is compatible with the nature of
      a democratic culture.
 Science and philosophy

• Richard Rorty is a well-known pragmatist.

• Pragmatists believe that there’s no truth in science because the world is
changing every day and scientists are making new discoveries that are becoming “the
absolute truth” until a new truth is discovered.
• “Science is often believed to be the “hard”, “objective” truth: the only sort of truth
worthy of the name.” However, according to R. Rorty, science only has an opinion,
not the truth.

Source: Objectivity, Realism and Truth R. Rorty 1991

https://sites.pitt.edu/~rbrandom/Courses/Antirepresentationalism%20(2020)/Texts/rorty-objectivity-relativism-and-truth.pdf
 Science and philosophy

Richard Rorty finds contradictions acceptable

because there’s no truth in science. Therefore,
scientifical progress doesn’t exist.
An example of a well known contradiction – society
believed the geocentric theory to be the
absolute truth for centuries until
N. Copernicus made his discovery in the 15th
century and announced it to everyone.

Source : https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/rorty/#RatiScieTrut
 Summary of the topic
Knowing the entire history of philosophy and its connection to science since the
Ancient Greeks, it is not difficult to tell that society has pushed away philosophy
from science and made it an accessory to literature or art, in other words, made it
a "pseudoscience". This new concept had been started by Richard Rorty himself,
stating that philosophy is not to tell the truth about the world that is surrounding
us, but to just tell and add to a story. Therefore, philosophy of science had lost its
importance to the theoretical and practical world of science.
Richard Rorty believes philosophy should not be limited by the practice and
theory of sciences (math, biology, physics) and be used to explore the mind and
beliefs. This completely contradicts with the main purpose of philosophy of
science we have seen in the Ancient Greeks where they believed that philosophy
is a part of the main disciplines of science.