The philosophy of science in the digital age

The digital age presupposes a reality that has never been seen by humans. This fast-changing reality was tantamount to a shock in the scientific and cultural milieus whose adaptation to changes occur at an accelerated pace that almost destroys any emerging philosophy of science.

The orientations and outcomes of science are no longer obscure. They are taking a path that scientists hope would elevate civilisation. However, this cannot be considered in an absolute manner because other features, however narrow, are shaking existence and stability. Digital race led by artificial intelligence that seeks to advance life but may move towards a catastrophe without proper regulations and ethics.

In this article, I’ll attempt to fathom the movement of philosophy and its mental tools in specifying the essence of science and its orientations at the peak of the technological progress. Here I’ll try as far as possible to move away from conventional philosophical interpretation so as not to fall in the trap of narrow imitation.

The first scientific stages of Homo sapiens, for me, is not confined to the agricultural revolution. I would confine it to the preliminary interpretation of the initial shape of science or ‘proto-science’ as called by Bertrand Russell in his book Wisdom of the West. At this point we see the manifestations of human thinking. In the absence of science, man endeavoured to find answers to existential questions beginning with primitive mental cognitive tools that led to the emergence of myth. This brought only little or no benefit to humanity and contributed to civilisational tardiness. Then came the ancient rationalism which began with the Greek and moved to Romans and Muslims before arriving in the West.

This piecemeal rationalism contributed to the establishment of many philosophical doctrines that led in some eras to the emergence of the rational and experimental schools of philosophy that led to the development of science from many bases. Competition among philosophical schools led to the liberalisation of science from the grip of superstition underpinned by the primitive tools of magic and metaphysical interpretations that are devoid of both rational and tangible cognitive certainty.

For me, the schools of philosophy such as that of Spinoza and Descartes played a role in the transition of science and its interpretational tools from the old stage of rationalism of Socrates, Plato and Aristotle without disregarding the contributions of Muslim philosophers like Al Kindi, Averroes, Al Farabi and Ibn Sina. Those Muslim philosophers contributed to the modern rationalism of Spinoza and Descartes by preserving the Greek legacy and reviving it after it was nearly vanished due to the Christian hegemony that wanted to put science and mind back to their rudimentary level.

We cannot ignore the importance of Kantianism which tried to strike a balance between the rationalist and experimentalist schools of philosophy to establish modern methodological constants for science, despite the moral tendency of this methodology, with the help of mathematical logic which led Newton to set up the modern conceptualisation of the cosmos and its mechanical movement thus establishing the principle of scientific determinism till the emergence of quantum mechanics and relativism which constituted a transformation to the most complicated philosophical angle namely scientific relativism and indeterminism.

At that time, more profound philosophical questions were raised about cosmic and existential topics the answers to which were scattered between randomness, coincidentalism and finalism. Many philosophical conundrums reflected the mechanism of relative thinking in science such as the essence of quantum pattern and the behaviour of the electrons therein, randomness in genetic mutations with their finality and existence with its essential ends.

Such enigmatic questions have entered into relativism as no determinism could be useful in establishing a clear-cut scientific pattern prompting us to try and understand the philosophical track of science with the emergence of the modern digital revolution represented by artificial intelligence.

Philosophy, alongside its tools that aim at determining the tracks and ends post the modern digital age, is no more a captive to uncertain relativism. Philosophy has not returned to its stern inevitability, as well. Rather, it is moving to more logical branches with mathematical forms that attempt to bring together philosophical patterns that strive to ensure the scientific movement without hindering modern scientific trends which began taking off the conventional dress of science to overtake the state of randomness and initiate a modern phase that tries to link science with its modern main derivatives (brain, mind and machine) to its modern digital mathematical pattern (artificial intelligence) and, by so doing, targeting to realise the nominal logarithmic logic.

Some threads of the philosophy of science are now becoming clear. The modern philosophy of science aims to identify the scientific essence with its digital nature and its epistemology that deals with the understanding of machines in the same way as it deals with the understanding of humans in terms of the principle of thinking i.e mental and emotional (psychological). With the twining between man and machine, we see that this modern philosophical essence is starting a new phase which can be called the digital philosophy that attempts to approach the machine not only in its thinking patterns but also its emotional ones in the presence of effective human overlapping which is about to get away from the scene.

In the presence of mathematical logic which operates in the digital space, it has become a pure mental and experimental necessity to raise the difficult questions that have previously relied on inductive reasoning with a conventional experimental nature that helps identify the appropriate scientific model thus representing the answer to that difficult question. However, the philosophy of science, in the presence of a digital brain capable of self-learning in all fields of life, will take a different direction befitting the digital object that will assume the leadership of science and its emerging revolution, at that time its algorithms will adopt a more professional philosophy that suits machine and its special mathematical logic.

I am not claiming that the conventional philosophy will fall apart, but rather it will function in its former scientific angles that did not enter the digital world. However, this type of science and its philosophy, in the presence of a comprehensive digital world, will be far away from the futuristic scene, not even in a gradual manner because the machine will be present in all manifestations of science including our delicate biology.

Perhaps I did not closely approach the attempt to detect the modern philosophical and scientific track as this philosophy is still in its beginning and I cannot find enough details to delve deeper into this newly born philosophy of science with the renaissance of the modern digital revolution. Details of this philosophy that will determine the mechanisms of scientific thinking in the modern digital age, may emerge in the near future.