INDEX- CV- PUBLS.- PICT.ESSAYS- ABSTRACTS- INDEX-LAPLACE- OL.ESSAYS-CRS.MATERIALS

1. INTRODUCTION

You may wonder why you should learn anything about Japanese philosophy of science in order to know Japanese society and culture. Speaking frankly, the combination of three teachers for this course was determined unsystematically, and I was assigned the role of the first speaker because I am the eldest among the three! However, we can find some significant reasons why we should know something about the state of philosophy in this country, because there are several features peculiar to it. I will briefly touch upon some of the key points in the following.

(1) Japanese Philosophy begins in Meiji Era.

Japanese equivalent of the word "philosophy"---"tetsugaku"---was coined in Meiji Era, and like many words used in science and humanities, it was a new word for Japanese people, laymen and scholars as well. And as you can easily imagine, people in Meiji Era must have spent tremendous amount of effort in order to understand a new discipline imported from the Western world. And for philosophy, in particular, the amount of effort may have been even greater in comparison to that for science, because you can use nothing but ideas and concepts in order to understand----no instruments, no observations which may connect your ideas to concrete objects. So by inventing new words, Japanese people somehow produced new elements in philosophy, as they tried to understand it.

(2) Japanese Philosophy of Science begins after the World War II.

Maybe you have heard of such names as Kitaro Nishida or Hajime Tanabe who were just typical examples of those who produced their own philosophy, abosorbing many things from Kant, Hegel, and other western philosophers. But I am not going to talk about their philosophy which I do not understand and I do not like. I mentioned this, only because similar things happened in the case of philosophy of science in Japan, after the second world war. Thus, philosophy of science is just a newest brand of western philosophy in Japan, and not very popular, unfortunately! I will later talk about some historical circumstances connected with the rise of philosophy of science in Japan. But right now, this single instance should be sufficient for illustrating Japanese peculiarities: I am the founder of philosophy and history of science here in Kyoto University, and this department was founded in 1993. In the United States, many similar departments were founded around 60's; and in Britain and Europe, the history goes as far back as 1830's!

(3) Something about Science and Philosophy of Science.

Here, I should remind you of one of the essential differences of philosophy in general and philosophy of science in particular. And this difference should be kept in mind when we review Japanese philosophy of science. In the case of philosophy in general, it is sometimes the case that one's philosophy exhibits some tendencies peculiar to regional or national traditions. For instance, the word "British Empiricism" means that there is a tradition of epistemology (theory of knowledge) peculiar to British philosophers, i.e. the tradition that emphasizes the importance of experience in our knowledge. This tradition is sometimes contrasted with the "continental rationalism", i.e. the view which emphasizes the role of reason in our knowledge. Again, the word "German Idealism" signifies the trend, beginning with Kant, going through Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, that emphasizes the importance of subjective aspect of knowledge and value-judgement. Nishida and Tanabe are often studied by western scholars who are interested in Japanese culture, because those scholars intend to see some Japanese peculiarities in their philosophy.

However, as regards philosophy of science in particular, it is almost nonsensical to try to emphasize the national or regional traditions, because science, the modern science itself, is thought to be universal in its character. Scientific knowldge, by its connotation, is meant to be knowledge valid to anyone, objectively true to Asians, Africans, Americans, or Europeans or even to Superman who comes from other part of the Galaxy; so the philosophy which aims at clarifying the nature of scientific knowledge should also be universal in its character! There may be some difficulties with this view of philosophy of science, but anyway this has been the predominant view.

As you may already know, modern science began in the 17th century. Copernicus died in the middle of the 16th century, and he is sometimes referred to as one of the founders of modern astronomy. But his heliocentric theory shared almost all concepts and mathematics of the ancient geocentric theory originated in Greece. Of course his theory had a great impact on modern science, but the most important founders of modern science publish most of their works in the 17th century: Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Johannes Kepler, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton, for instance. All of them used mathematics in order to describe the workings of the world. And mathematics became the universal language for doing science since then. And you should notice that the universality of mathematics is conferred upon natural science, physics in particular. And physics has been always the model for scientific knowledge when we do philosophy of science.

For a brief history of philosophy of science, see my "Philosophy and History of Science, What?": http://www.bun.kyoto-u.ac.jp/phisci/E.phs.html

If you wish to know more about philosophers and philosophical concepts, see "The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy"

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/

(4) Something about Modern Philosophy.

Modern philosophy also began around the same time. Descartes, for instance, proposed a new method for acquiring knowledge starting from secure foundations. His theory of knowledge can be largely seen as one kind philosophy of science. Francis Bacon also proposed a new logic for empirical science, and his theory of knowledge was also another kind of philosophy of science. Even Newton made philosophical remarks now and then in his scientific work; he proposed several rules for "experimental philosophy", and such an attempt was unmistakably a piece of philosophy of science. Thus modern philosophy had a strong connection with science, at least in the initial stage.

Traditionally, however, philosophy has had other sorts of interests: questions about human nature, about the beauty and the morality, for instance. These are subjects not primarily connected with science. And philosophers interested in epistemological problems of science seldom paid due attention to these subjects. This is particularly true of the philosophers connected with the logical empiricism, which I am going to take up as the first topic.

[to be continued.....]

Keep your eye on this site!

→Philosophy of Science in Japan 2