The Scientist and the Philosopher

During our first class, I found myself entering a process of asking a question, and finding answers that beg further questions. I'm sure this is a common enough occurrence, as answers are rarely straightforward or absolute in philosophy. Or perhaps they are. I am by no means an expert.

Can we have knowledge? I do not know. In my class on experimental design, my professor said that to scientists, there is objective reality and apparent reality, and apparent reality is distorted by human elements: Our tendency towards myth, superstition, bias, and fallacies gets in the way. And that it is our job as scientists to minimize those tendencies in order to get as close as possible to objective reality. But in light of this class, it seems to me that such knowledge that a scientist may obtain is ultimately an approximation, a guess made with flawed data. I believe many scientists themselves will agree with that sentiment, albeit while arguing about the severity of the distortions our humanity places upon reality.

I learned in our class that Emmanuel Levinas believes that there is an Otherness to things that cannot be understood, and any attempt to do so reduces the Otherness of that thing. I believe I may have misunderstood, although perhaps not too gravely, as a Google search shows that "the Other" is a term used solely in regards to human characteristics and qualities. However, this too ultimately skews our perception of the world. As I also learned this class, in order to understand someone else, we turn them into ourselves so that we may relate to them. But because we lack comprehensive understanding of even our selves, that understanding is doomed to be incomplete or flawed. I feel like this is true even of nonhuman entities, as we apply our faculties in order to understand and interact with the world, yet those faculties are a part of an incomprehensible whole, if we assume Levinas is correct.

So, if we define true knowledge as knowledge that describes an objective reality, then perhaps true knowledge is impossible and all we can gain is approximate knowledge. Prior to taking this course, I had been advised to look up the definition of phenomenology. Which, as I found it, is "The science of phenomena as distinct from that of the nature of being". With this definition in mind, I think it can be reasonably concluded that we may only claim knowledge of phenomena as we experience it, creating a sort of approximate knowledge that reflects our encounters with phenomena. Perhaps then, the difference between the scientist and the philosopher is the faith they have in how close such approximate knowledge can be to objective reality.