Philosophy and science used to be one and the same. The major philosophers — Aristotle, Descartes, and so on — were also scientists. And the major scientists — Galileo, Newton, etc. — were also philosophers. Recently, however, that has changed. Science and philosophy have split from each other. It has even gone so far for Stephen Hawking to call philosophy "dead."
This is problematic. Science, especially physics, cannot exist without philosophy. And philosophy cannot exist without science. Let's start with the latter: why philosophy cannot exist without science. Look at some of the greatest philosophical questions out there: What are we? How did we get here? What is existence? What is matter? What is time? None of these questions can be answered without the use of science. Science can help explain how we — humans — got here, through evolution. Science can also help explain thought — although it cannot yet explain consciousness. No philosophical text can be taken seriously if it uses improper science. Philosophy cannot bend the rules. Therefore, a strong scientific argument is needed in philosophy.
Why philosophy is needed for science to work is much more interesting. Let's look at time for example. Recent developments in physics have shown that time does not exist in the universe. In space, there is no difference between the past and the future. Yet humans, as well as other animals, have a sense of time. We have memories of things that happened in the past and we schedule things to happen in the future. Physics, or any other science for that matter, cannot explain our sense of time. If we rely only on physics, we are forced to throw away our sense of time since it technically does not exist. That is not possible. The concept of time is useful to us. And because science cannot explain it, we need philosophy too. The same is true with our mind. Science can tell us the physical creation of a thought. However, it cannot tell us about why we think the way we do and how we have such a complex conscious. Again, philosophy is needed.
If we rely on science for everything, there is still a lot that cannot be explained, from our conception of time to our conscious. For science to be valuable, philosophy has to be present. It would not make sense to live without a conception of time because science tells us that it does not exist. The absence of the true existence of time is only useful to know if we also know why our conception of time is important. And philosophy is useless if it goes against science. Without scientific reasoning, philosophy has no value. It is time for philosophy and science to once again merge together. While science and philosophy can still be studies separately, it is imperative that we once again connect the two and realize that they rely on each other for importance.
