Transactions of the Japan Academy
Online ISSN : 2424-1903
Print ISSN : 0388-0036
ISSN-L : 0388-0036
Volume 52, Issue 2
Displaying 1-2 of 2 articles from this issue
  • On the Separation between Philosophy and Science
    Hiroshi NAGAI
    1997 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 91-99
    Published: 1997
    Released on J-STAGE: June 22, 2007
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The transcendental philosophy of Kant (1724-1804) has been considered to be one reliable justification for the classical mechanics established by Newton (1642-1727) in the 17th century. Such a viewpoint used to be accepted as common sense in learned circles. Kant was born in Königsberg and studied Newton's physics at the university of his birth place. Since that time he became devoted to the physics of Newton, and furthermore he even obtained the nick name“Newton in Königsberg”.
    In those days (1755) Kant anonymously published Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels. At the beginning of this book, he said expressly that he had written it in accordance with the physical principles of Newton. Such a comment proved that he was a sincere Newtonian. Kant's earnest devotion to Newton, however, could not remain permanently, because in his old age Kant became unable to admit the term“natural philosophy, ”as used in the usual term Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica, 1687. Using a few words in his Opus postumum Kant pointed out that Newton has fallen into the error of terminology (Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Akademie Ausgabe XXI, Opus postumum Erste Hälfte, 1936, pp. 190, 230, 510, etc.).
    According to Kant, using“natural philosophy”is nothing but a tautology or a contradiction. Therefore, natural philosophy must be corrected to natural “science”. Then, the concept of natural“philosophy”will disappear and the correct Principia in two different forms ought to take respectively the place of Newton's Principia as follows.
    X Philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica
    1 Scientiae naturalis principia philosophica
    2 Scientiae naturalis principia mathematica
    However, was Newton's terminology of natural philosophy really erroneous? It was not necessarily the truth of the matter. The philosophy of Kant was transcendental. Accordingly philosophy should be neither defined nor qualified, although it could define all other things. From the viewpoint of transcendental philosophy it seemed to Kant that natural science must substitute for natural philosophy. Thus Kant separated philosophy from science here, and the concept of natural science came into existence. Such being the case I can not approve easily Kant's criticism of Newton's Principia. Moreover, the English had not yet the term“natural science”apart from natural philosophy. The term of natural science first appeared there in 1840. Nevertheless, Newton continued to be called“our philosopher”until later years.
    Since the era of ancient Greek civilization, the idea of philosophy viz. science had been a traditional expression of European thought. Kant, however, separated science from philosophy against the historical tradition in Europe. But all the pioneers of early modern science like Descartes, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, etc. were always indeed, the philosophers. Needless to say, Newton certainly associated himself with them as well.
    After the separation between science and philosophy, science has unfortunately developed without philosophy and philosophy also has developed without science. But many of the results brought about expressly by scientific technology are not only undesirable, but also very confusing. An urgent question of today must be the realization of a newly constructive philosophy of science in a practical way.
    Philosophy without science is empty, Science without philosophy is blind.
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  • Yoshikazu MIYAZAKI
    1997 Volume 52 Issue 2 Pages 101-118
    Published: 1997
    Released on J-STAGE: June 22, 2007
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    There are difficult problems which have been called as titles starting from names of famous economists.
    One is the well-known“Adam Smith Problem”which puzzled some German economists in the last half of nineteenth century.
    In The Theory of Moral Sentiments published in 1759, Adam Smith was a moral philosopher, and regarded“sympathy”as the main motive of human behavior, whereas, in The Wealth of Nations (1776), he was an economist, and protected“self interest”as a human nature which contributes for economic efficiency. How can these apparently paradoxical and contradictory arguments of Adam Smith be reconciled? This is nothing but“the Adam Smith Problem.”
    Another is“the Maynard Keynes Problem”which was studied in a sequence of works after the last half of the decade 1980, as is clarified in the article, “Das Maynard Keynes Problem”by Bradley W. Batemam. Particularly influential among them were On Keynes's Method by Anna M. Carabelli (1988) and Keynes: Philosophy, Economics, and Politics by R. M. O'Donnell (1989). They were followed up by Keynes's Philosophical Development (1994) by John B. Davis and the very recently published Keynes's Uncertain Revolution by B. W. Bateman (1996).
    In the article entitled as“My Early Beliefs”(1949), J.M. Keynes defined ‘religion’as one's attitude towards oneself and the ultimate, and‘morals’as one's attitude towards the outside world. Keynes in the early period tried to be an immoralist in order to be emancipated from the traditional Benthamism. For this purpose, the early Keynes accepted only the‘religion’and threw away the‘morals.’He was the“last Utopian”who convinced himself a priori that all the people other than himself were as innately rational as himself.
    Keynes in the later period on the other hand, cast away his early belief that all the people are rational by human nature. He accepted irrationality in the broad sense and emphasized the importance of 'conventional judgments' which depend on the opinions of the other in contrast to the judgments of the rational individual.
    Instead of the atomistic view of a society, Keynes in the later period premised the model of society in which individual decisions are made by the mutually interdependent expectations. According to him, economics as a moral science is established on the basis of such a model of society, and is methodologically completely different from economics as a pseudo-natural-science which is based on the atomistic view of a society.
    The difference between the early thoughts of Keynes and the later one is clearly a discontinuous change of view rather than a continuous change in degrees of stresses on different viewpoints.
    I think that nowhere other than here lies the center of the Keynesian revolution.
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