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Why did science deviate from philosophy ?

Q: Isaac Newton was a “natural philosopher,” not known in his time as a “scientist,” yet is now seen as one of the greatest scientists. There was a split between natural science and the humanities (such as philosophy and religion). How did this happen?

Krishna:

Portrait of Newton ( Source: Wikipedia)

Newton’s time was different.

The 17th century was a time of intense religious feeling, and nowhere was that feeling more intense than in Great Britain. There a devout young man, Issac Newton, was finally to discover the way to a new synthesis in which truth was revealed and religious feelings were preserved.

Science goes back well before Isaac Newton. But that was not an era of modern science.

English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell coined the term scientist in 1833, and it first appeared in print in Whewell's anonymous 1834 review of Mary Somerville's On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences published in the Quarterly Review (2)*.

That was after Newton’s life ended (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) * (1).

Newton would have defined himself not as a scientist, but as a natural philosopher. He was deeply involved in alchemical, religious, and biblical studies, and in the later part of his life he played a prominent role in British politics, economics, and the promotion of scientific research (3). Newton viewed these scientific fields in relation to his quest for the deepest secrets of the universe, matter theory and religion. Guicciardini sets Newton the natural philosopher in the troubled context of the religious and political debates ongoing during Newton’s life. (3).

He somehow lost his wa.y Here is what happened to one of the most brilliant scientists who ever lived, when he replaced "I don't know" with "Goddidit": (4)

Sir Isaac Newton explained the orbits of planets around the sun and of moons around their planets. However, he could not explain how a complex system like our solar system, where all the bodies are tugging at each other all the time, could stay stable. Being a very religious person, he asserted that the only way such a system could stay stable is if the hand of God intervenes from time to time to keep things stable.

Satisfied with that answer, he spent the rest of his life on useless stuff, like occult studies, looking for hidden coded messages from God in the bible and alchemy, for example his recipe for the Philosopher's Stone, which he believed could be used to turn lead into gold (4):

Newton’s manuscript

After his death other scientists fully explained orbit mechanics and how complex systems like the solar system stay stable without the need to invoke the assistance of any of the gods.

At the limit of his scientific knowledge, Newton has replaced reason and inquiry with 'Goddidit'. He could have done so much more of his groundbreaking work if he did not do that.

"God of the gaps" type fallacies don't make science move forward. (4)

But his thinking and ways of working reflected his time. He was born in the 17th century where science was in its infancy, and the scientific mind dabbled with magic as much as it did science. We can understand that. Newton sought to understand the world not in the manner of a modern scientist, but rather like an ancient sage who believed in a hidden meaning behind the natural world.

He is now considered as one of the greatest scientist because his work ‘s good.

Sir Isaac Newton contributed significantly to the field of science over his lifetime. He invented calculus and provided a clear understanding of optics. But his most significant work had to do with forces, and specifically with the development of a universal law of gravitation and his laws of motion.

Newton's laws of motion are three laws that describe the relationship between the motion of an object and the forces acting on it. These laws, which provide the basis for Newtonian mechanics, can be paraphrased as follows:

A body remains at rest, or in motion at a constant speed in a straight line, except insofar as it is acted upon by a force.

At any instant of time, the net force on a body is equal to the body's acceleration multiplied by its mass or, equivalently, the rate at which the body's momentum is changing with time.

If two bodies exert forces on each other, these forces have the same magnitude but opposite directions.

The three laws of motion were first stated by Isaac Newton in his Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy), originally published in 1687. Newton used them to investigate and explain the motion of many physical objects and systems. In the time since Newton, new insights, especially around the concept of energy, built the field of classical mechanics on his foundations. Limitations to Newton's laws have also been discovered; new theories are necessary when objects move at very high speeds (special relativity), are very massive (general relativity), or are very small (quantum mechanics). (5)

So he ‘s one of the persons who laid foundations for modern science. We still use his work.

Academia was originally composed of just one field, philosophy, that included all academic fields and sciences. Over time, academia diversified into different fields due to the increased specialisation of knowledge. The natural sciences were the first to split from philosophy into stand-alone academic disciplines mostly during the 18th century. The social sciences split in the late 19th century. Philosophy itself remained in the now so-called ‘humanities’ (including arts). This led to the development of different ‘intellectual worlds’ and different cultures: the natural sciences and the humanities with the social sciences in between (6).

The word philosophy goes back to ancient Greece (a contraction of words with the roots philein and sophia, loving wisdom or philos and sophia, the ‘friend of wisdom’ for the philosopher). (7)

Humanities studies human beings and their behaviour, natural science studies the physical world.

After about 1800 there was increasing fragmentation of the various fields of knowledge and philosophy was considered to be part of the modern ‘humanities’ quite separate from science, and the natural sciences were fragmented into physics, chemistry, biology etc., and even finer subdivisions.

By the early 20th century, philosophy itself had split into disconnected streams. Analytical philosophy and continental philosophy are the two most commonly distinguished streams. Analytical philosophy focuses on realism, logic and science.

The modern use of the term "science" means a study that strictly follows the scientific method.

Scientific method ( Source: Wikipedia)

Today we include ‘philosophy’ as part of the ‘humanities’, in French ‘sciences humaines’, in Italian ‘studi umanistici’, and German ‘Geisteswissenschaften’ (‘sciences of the human spirit’), as opposed to the ‘natural sciences’ or ‘science’ in short (7).

Today, one recognizes an ever-increasing specialization of the various areas of scientific investigation into more and more fine-grained sub-fields and ‘sub-branches of sub-fields’. In order to counter this tendency, ETH Zurich has introduced the possibility to study ‘Interdisciplinary Natural Sciences’ in a program which combines physics, chemistry and biology to start with (including mathematics). (7)

This turned out to become a very successful and lively program of studies.

What separates science from philosophy?

The difference lies in the method of explanation. While philosophy uses just philosophical arguments and philosophical principles, science makes use of empirical data and objective evidence - the scientific method. Science uses empirical data to validate its theories. It takes the answers of experiment and proves them to be right or wrong.

This separation happened because people have argued about what constitutes “truth” and “falsehood” in the history of the scientific method, as well as the limits of human knowledge and human values.

Historically, philosophers and scientists have often worked together to create new knowledge. Philosophical ideas have informed many scientific discoveries, and science often draws inspiration from philosophy. Philosophical ideas also impart methodological impulses and worldviews to the sciences. Many of the guiding ideas of modern science were first articulated in philosophical thought, from Democritus’ idea of the atomic structure of matter to Diderot’s hypothesis about natural selection.

That is why trained people in science get Doctor of philosophy ( PhD)s to become scientists. This age old custom still exists and we are scientists and got PhDs to become scientists.

Philosophers often focus on questions concerning how theories work, and whether they can be reduced to another. These questions arise in areas ranging from chemistry and physics to individual psychology. In other areas, philosophers explore the foundations of statistics, and the validity of scientific reasoning. Some philosophers say that science can answer “why” questions, while philosophy cannot.

While philosophy makes progress by cycles, science follows the scientific method. It makes predictions and experiments to test their theories. As such, scientific progress is measured by the accuracy of predictions and the applicability of the theories. Science is the better choice when it comes to the ultimate goal of human life. It’s a work that requires much more effort and time than it takes to experiment in order to gain knowledge.

It’s important to recognize that philosophy and science can be very different.

Modern thought processes demanded more sophisticated techniques for the facts to get established and therefore, science, as a new field deviated from philosophy for this very purpose.