Herbert Spencer said, “Knowledge of the lowest kind is ununified knowledge; science is partially unified knowledge; philosophy is completely unified knowledge.”
How does that work? Isn’t science the best sort of knowledge? Isn’t philosophy, while perhaps well-intended, basically just speculation and nonsense?
Until recently, you would have had a case for the “speculation” argument. Philosophy has always been an effort to arrive at truth, but it has also labored under the restriction of insufficient data. As a result, it often became a series of educated guesses. Because it lacked a firm basis in reality, some of those guesses embodied the opinions and prejudices of the individuals making them. Others were simply wrong. The outcome was a collection of contradictory and often unworkable ideas.
Some discipline had to be introduced into this area, and that discipline came through science. An agreement emerged that the only data acceptable for purposes of reasoning would be data that could be independently and empirically verified — in other words, data about STUFF. It took time, but that standard effectively closed the door on the speculative excesses of philosophy. Science became so successful that philosophy gradually fell into disuse.
With the advent of advanced science and mathematics in the twentieth century, humanity finally came into possession of the last of the important pieces of the truth puzzle. Almost no one realized it at the time, but the pieces were finally there.
One of the major clues was this: the questions raised by empirical science could not be resolved by remaining strictly within the bounds of empirical science. Subatomic particles that appear to exist in multiple states or locations simultaneously, that do not seem to fully exist until observed, and that behave in ways that appear fundamentally random — these phenomena cannot be fully explained by empirical science alone. There are other examples.
This universe can be thought of as existing within a box — or a bottle, or some other kind of container. Starting from the center, we have worked outward, discovering everything we could about the contents of that box. Now we are approaching its boundaries. Yet the material that makes up the box must be fundamentally different from the contents inside it. None of the knowledge or rules we have learned about what is inside the box can tell us anything about this new material, which behaves in strange and unpredictable ways.
Pardon the pun, but we need to step outside the box. Using the data of STUFF, we have learned a great deal about STUFF. But there is more to life than STUFF. We have learned almost nothing about where that STUFF comes from, what it is ultimately made of, why it exists, or why it exists in the form that it does.
We have reached the boundary between physics and metaphysics.
Centuries ago, reacting to earlier undisciplined speculation, we effectively banned metaphysics from serious discussions about truth. Now we find, somewhat reluctantly, that we must return to it. However, we can bring with us the lessons of science, logic, mathematics, and disciplined reasoning. We need admit only as much metaphysics into our physics as is necessary to address the unresolved questions before us. If we keep our thinking straight, it becomes possible to workably address many of the questions that have remained unanswered since human beings first began to wonder.
The key to it all is philosophy. Philosophy is the activity that can step back, take in the whole, and work toward resolving the puzzle. While science can provide detailed knowledge about individual trees, philosophy concerns itself with the forest — what it is, why it is there, and how it came to be.
And that is the place of philosophy: giving shape, direction, and integration to all the sciences, all the mathematics, and all the accumulated knowledge of humanity.
Philosophy is completely unified knowledge.