The Pathway Machine

[Purple Rabbit]

String theory so far has no falsifiable formulation. Vast numbers of theoretical scientists are involved though. But according to Popper's demarcation rules string theory on this ground cannot be called science. So what is it? Sheer speculation, an intellectual excercise with no bearings in the real world? Or is it philosophy excercising a brilliant idea with mathematical tools and logic. I say it is philosophy feeding to science. Philosophy and science are in symbiosis. Science feeds philosophical investigation and vice versa.

I'd say String theory is primarily a philosophical question, but that doesn't prohibit it from being researched by science, especially if it affects science in such a big way.

I didn't say that it cannot become science, but technically it only becomes science whem it can be formulated falsifiable. So in essence you acknowledge this in your reply. You acknowledge that philosophy and science are intertwined. Philosophy feeds science and science feeds philosophy. Another example is how cognitive philosophy and cognitive science are related. Daniel Dennett is an excellent example of a person using philosophical investigation to dig deeper into the mind body problem an thereby triggering scientific research.

I never stated that science and philosophy should be separate, but that they are not the same thing.

Well, I haven't withspoken that did I?

Philosophy isn't a part of science, and science isn't a part of philosophy.

That's true only in the sense that philosophy does not encompass the whole of science and vice versa. You acknowledged in the above that parts of philosophy are in an intermediate domain where philosophy feeds science and vice versa. And that is all I asserted.

Philosophy tries to answer questions that cannot be reasonably answered by the scientific method;

You are wrong there. Philosophy cannot and has not conclusively answered any existential question. Name one example where philosophy has conclusively answered existential problems like free will, mind body problem, the existence of god.

things like the matter of ethics.

That really is the worst example you could give. Philosophy does not conclusively answer any ethical issue. Furthermore it clearly needs science as input, for instance biological knowledge to assess the impact of abortion on the foetus.

Science cannot tell us whether we should have abortions, because there is no scientific way of determining what constitutes a "human life" because there are different ideas of what we should call "human".

Well it does not follow from the shortcomings of science that philosophy can answer these questions. A clear non sequitur. Ethics at best is about applying reason to normative thinking. Still it is normative. Answers depend on the intentions of the beholder of presented 'problems'.

There are many different opinions about it, and it is a question of philosophy to answer.

Much of philosophy, especially ethics is educated opinion. There are no conclusive answers in philosophy alone, there is only careful dissecting of questions with reason as a tool.

Likewise, philosophy has nothing to say on electric cars, because science can answer all the questions about electric cars.

Wrong again. There is an ethical side to electric cars that philosophy can ponder.

So you can think of science and philosophy as separate entities that work together well in some situations. They are both aspects of human endeavour, but are not part of each other. One relies primarily on human reason alone, and the other relies primarily on human research.

Your use of the word 'primarily' shows my point which is that science and philosophy overlap one another.