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  3. Some say that one of the main differences between science and philosophy is that science makes progress while philosophers go ro

Some say that one of the main differences between science and philosophy is that science makes progress while philosophers go ro

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问题     Some say that one of the main differences between science and philosophy is that science makes progress while philosophers go round in circles endlessly discussing the same questions. I’m not convinced.【F1】George Sarton, a founder of the relatively new field of history of science, speaks for the many in calling science the only discipline that is "obviously and undoubtedly cumulative and progressive. " Once upon a time, people thought that scary, unexpected phenomena like thunder and lightning must be caused by the extreme anger of the gods. But with Greek civilization came the beginnings of real science.【F2】Nearly two thousand years separated that golden age from the next one; but since the Scientific Revolution advances have poured forth almost without let-up. Newton united heavens and earth through gravitation; Einstein discovered e = mc2. Now physicists are in hot pursuit of a Theory of Everything, an equation for the whole universe as simple as Einstein’s.
    The arts are not like the sciences in this way, and don’t aim to be. "Beethoven did not surpass Bach," says Nobel biologist Francois Jacob, "in the way that Einstein surpassed Newton. " Rather, the arts furnish a large amount of points of view, reflecting the uniqueness of their makers. Philosophy falls somewhere between the arts and sciences. On the one hand, it offers worldviews that may be too disparate to compare: Hume and Husserl, for example, or Spinoza and Sartre. It is not surprising, then, that the question "Is philosophy progressive?" is hardly ever raised.【F3】On the other hand, philosophy, like science, is a quest for truth, and it too requires that we check our theories against what we observe in the external world, or the internal one(sense data, pains, etc.).
    A few philosophers, such as Hegel and Herbert Spencer, seem to hold that everything is progressive.【F4】But even discounting pessimists and postmodernists, who are unwilling to support the idea of progress at all, very few think the history of philosophy shows an overall progressive course getting better, if not day by day, at least century by century. The notion that Wittgenstein’s philosophy surpasses Plato’s seems downright silly.
    If what we are asking, though, is whether philosophy is ever progressive, 1 think the answer is clearly yes; sometimes it is even cumulatively progressive as science.【F5】And I think we could see more progress than we do if philosophers gave more thought to whether what they are writing really moves philosophy forward, or merely adds to the accumulated jargon.
【F4】
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答案然而，就连采取怀疑态度、根本不愿支持“进步”这一观念的悲观主义者和后现代主义者中，也很少有人认为哲学史显示出了总体上不断前进的过程——就算不是今天比昨天进步，至少是这个世纪比上个世纪进步。
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