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Couldn't agree with you more. A lot of people jump into the naive belief that science replaces philosophy because philosophy is often the starting point of many of the sciences--as is typical, we see a connection and begin a reductive process that dumbs it all down to a straightforward relation like causality or linear progress, ignoring the actual complexities of the relationship. Nietzsche would scold us! We tend to forget, of course, that science is really just another, even if it happens to be the most sensible thus far, form of dogma, and philosophy is one of the only, if not the only, discipline that can call it to account. Philosophy of Science is an incredibly important field and will only become more important as we advance in the sciences--it has revealed and dealt with issues such as, our epistemic prejudice (ie the belief that most people hold that our current science is 'correct' even though history's course would increase the probability that it isn't), whether or not there actually is such a thing as scientific progress, or progress in general, how objectivity, as we frequently understand the concept, is grossly mishandled and probably an impossibility in its purest sense, how methods of verification can lead us astray... the list goes on. Philosophy is important and I wish more people studied it or at least had a general familiarity with it. It really should be a gen ed requirement down to the Jr. high level. |