The last idea that I want to react to is illustrated by this next quote.
In his book, “The Grand Design,” Steven Hawking states:
“Traditionally these are questions for philosophy (what is the nature of reality, did the universe need a creator, etc.), but philosophy is dead. Philosophy has not kept up with modern developments in science, particularly physics. Scientists have become the bearers of the torch of discovery in our quest for knowledge.”(Page 5, “The Grand Design”).
This is both true and false. It is true because people in the academic community who call themselves philosophers are really just doing history of philosophy. They are still arguing about what Kant said a long time ago, and Hawking is very correct that they can’t be bothered to study physics. Take it from me; I saw this first hand. I had just naturally started to do philosophy before I went back to school and I did it by asking myself questions and reading books on physics like Hawking’s “A Brief History of Time,” (as well as books on religion, etc.) After all, how can you expect to know anything at all about reality if you don’t know anything about physics! Anyway, I was trying to do philosophy based on physics in school but they mostly tried to shut me down. They do not want to hear about it.
The above statement that “philosophy is dead” is also false however, because I am doing philosophy based on modern physics! Go here for my main site, and here for a book I wrote. My websites have been accessed thousands of times over the years from all around the world, and are being shared more and more all the time.
The last thing that I have to say on this subject is that science and philosophy require two different types of thinking/thinkers. Scientists must be very focused in their thinking, very precise, very mathematical, etc. Whereas these days philosophy has become a pursuit that requires the “right brain” or holistic grasp of lots of info, and then integrating it into a viable theory, which I believe that I have done. You can judge for yourself whether I have succeeded or not.
David M. Petersen