How any why do you rank scientific facts, philosophical meanings and spiritual values?
Rank them #1, #2, #3, explain them some, and state why you believe that to be the correct ranking.
Thank you for all sincere answers !
Love, peace and progress in Spirit and in All Truth !
2014-01-22T14:43:49Z
My TYPO. Make that "How and why ..."
Martin T2014-01-23T22:44:14Z
Favorite Answer
I rank philosophy above science because science came out of philosophy. I think it was Bertrand Russell who pointed out that as soon as a part of philosophy starts working it splits of into a separate subject. That happened with mathematics a very long time ago; with science a few centuries ago and with psychology very recently. Any one who discusses scientific method is doing philosophy. Some people accept scientific method but insist that they are opposed to philosophy. That usually means that they have turned a certain set of ideas into a dogma that they do not want to examine.
However, new challenges keep coming along. 100 years ago quantum mechanics appeared. This is scientific; it makes precise predictions that can be tested, but there is no universally accepted way to describe it in terms that our minds are comfortable with. This is a philosophical question. There are other philosophical problems on the borders of science: Does time exists objectively or is a part of the mind? How can a material object like the brain experience anything? Maybe eventually these issues will eventually be well understood scientifically, but so far scientists do not even agree precisely what the questions mean.
I would not be interested in any of this if I did not value understanding very highly. This is a spiritual value. I also think it is important that scientists - and philosophers - consider the effect that their work is liable to have.
Most of the "science" known about by the general public is backed up by vast quantities if high quality evidence. That particularly includes the theory of relativity, the big bang theory and the theory and fact of biological evolution.
Scientists can be wrong about things, a famous example among analytical chemists is the iron content of spinach, which led to the Popeye character of cartoons eating spinach for extra strength. German chemist Erich von Wolf analysed spinach in 1870 and got 3.5 mg per 100 grams, but wrote down 35 mg per 100 grams. The error was spotted in 1937 but the fact that the iron content of spinach is only average has taken a long time to penetrate public consciousness. Other errors and a few frauds, more or less comical have occurred, but these have had no effect on major theories.
Philosophy is not to be trusted. By means of more or less strict logic, philosophers start with something which may or may not be true and end up with conclusions that may be true, or may be resoundingly false. A good example is the conclusion published by Hegel in late 1800 that there could be no more than seven members of the solar system, the Sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. Right on cue, the dwarf planet / large asteroid Ceres was discovered on 1 January 1801 and a few decades later, Uranus and Neptune, then in the 20th century, an host of asteroids, Pluto and at least a dozen more dwarf planets outside the orbit of Pluto. Karl Marx, who has some claim to be a philosopher, was not interested in evidence at all. Plato's writings are bizarre.
Spiritual values are entirely based on imagination and vary from person to person and culture to culture. None of them have any backing of solid evidence.
I rate philosophy more because philosophers like democritus invented the idea of the atom. Philosophy ties in nicely with science in some aspects plus it goes further to explain concepts science cannot. Spirituality on the other hand doesn't mean anything to me as it has no measurable nor observable evidence to validate, verify or demonstrate the existence of its entities. Whereas science and philosophy on most cases is based on logic and reasoning.
Science is the most important as the advance of the human race is based on scientific discoveries and reasoning.
In conclusion: Science ranked 1st Philosophy ranked 2nd Spirituality ranked 3rd ( last place)