| Thus, whereas the work of Plato and Aristotle is of great historical interest, and represents a remarkable achievement with the limited tools available to them, we should go beyond their work to that of their successors who, with the full complement of the tools of the four generations of media, have been able to surpass them. Newton could see far only because he stood on the shoulders of giants. We can, in turn, stand on the shoulders of Newton. However, philosophy has not been supplanted by those myriad sciences into which it evolved. Science is a supplement to philosophy. It provides empirical evidence about phenomena which can be studied by its methods. Philosophy addresses the questions that science can't answer and the reasons why science can't answer them [Wilson, Page 11].
Philosophers ask the important questions. Modern scientists tend to focus on some specialised narrow domain and lose sight of the big questions to which their work is making a contribution, however small. In the new Academy, we need to focus on the basic human questions. We who carry the title "Doctor of Philosophy" are embarrassed when someone asks "Is there a doctor in the house?" and sheepishly confess to not being a "real" doctor. We should be equally embarrassed when someone asks "Is there a philosopher in the house?" To shrug that this question will never be asked or to dismiss the role of philosopher as being outside the scope of our discipline is to succumb to the "tyranny of instrumental reasoning" with which this paper started.
[Much of this paper evolved during breakfast chats with Dr. Ray Charron. He has two Ph. D.s and is thus twice as smart as me. He certainly deserves half the credit (or blame!) for this paper.] |
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