It's occured to me that science has led humanity on a path more in line with the study of facts, and proven things and such, and has led mankind toward the discouragement of philosophical thought. It seems that science has basically replaced philosophy.
Is it true that philosophy is ultimately outdated, pre-scientific thinking? Is philosophy "archaic" type thinking.?
Science does not prove any of its hypothesis. Think of how many scientific theories held in the early parts of the 20th century are still held today. While science has done much to improve the material quality of our lives, all science remains in the realm of doubt.
Empirical science is based on inferential logic, ie., it looks at particulars and infers the general. As such science can only be probabilistic. The next better observation or more cogent reasoning applied to existing observations would improve upon the last inference but even the improved hypothesis would still remain only tentative.
Philosophy, on the other hand, deals in concepts and deductive logic rather than experiments and inferential logic. The conclusions of the philosopher are far more durable than those of the scientist. The precursors to scientists today were the natural philosophers of old. This branch of philosophy limited itself to find natural causes for observed effects, ie, the scientific method.
When the natural philosophers of old hit a brick wall with their experimental method, they would punt the problem back to philosophy's metaphysics department. Today, however, some so-called scientists who hit a brick wall with their experiments rather than report "we just don't know yet" casually slide into metaphysical analysis, but abandon the rational restraints used by meta-physicians, and cloak their imaginative claims as "science". In the past, the head of the philosophy department would call them out on that sleight-of-hand trick and order them back into their sandbox. Not so much today. The scientists have not replaced philosophy, as much as some have usurped and bastardized it.
This usurpation is especially true in the historiogarphical sciences (astronomers, geologists, archaeologists, paleontologists, geologists, historians, etc.) , less true in the empirical sciences. Because phenomena of the distant past are not open to observation and experiment, historiographers must attempt to reconstruct the events of the past and appeal to the principle of uniformity.
