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Science Connections

Is Philosophy Progressive?

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. Toni Vogel Carey isn’t convinced.

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 wrath of the gods. But with Greek civilization came the beginnings of real science: Euclidean geometry, Pythagorean harmonics, Aristotelian biology, Archimedean statics etc. Nearly two millennia 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; Benjamin Franklin united them through electricity (taming the gods’ wrath with a wave of his lightning rod).

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