Philosophy, or how I learned that neuroscience isn’t perfect
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Abstract
The ancient philosopher Aristotle made some of the earliest scientific claims about the natural world while making philosophical claims about abstractions like happiness, virtue and the nature of reality itself. Centuries later, Watson and Crick elucidated the double helical structure of DNA. Although appearing strikingly different, scientists and philosophers ought to be equally conscientious of the dynamics of their investigations, taking notice to principles and causal interactions. Through history, science and philosophy have complemented each other and in fact share many core elements in their fundamental ideology despite investigating different realms of reality. Fundamentally, science aggregates knowledge by conjecture and experimentation to discover truths about the physical world, while philosophy investigates our world of abstractions with logic and rational argument. Collectively, the two disciplines and the efforts of their faculty strive to understand inward and outward reality, and have fundamental similarities and differences in their execution. Yet, philosophy remains imperative in scientific pursuit of reality’s greatest questions and science equally complements philosophical investigations
of the current human condition.