Philosophical questions are speculative
The questions asked by philosophers push us past the limits of established knowledge,asking what might lie beyond.Philosophers have made some of their most important contributions by making intelligent guesses about what lies beyond the knowledge of their time.Democritus suggested the existence of atoms long before there was clinching scientific evidence for accepting their existence;Empedocles suggested some kind of evolution long before biologists came to similar conclusions on the basis of their much greater knowledge;many scientific discoveries in psychology and sociology vindicate suggestions made long ago by philosophers.Of course,philosophers have made an even larger number of guesses that have been refuted by the further accumulation of facts.But because the critical scientist usually accomplishes more by staying fairly close to the level of what he can observe,and rightly hesitates before making broad generalizations and sweeping hypotheses,he is often helped by remembering the freer speculations of philosophers.
Philosophers also speculate beyond the limits of all possible scientific knowledge.Questions as to whether God exists or not,whether there are any ultimate values,whether there is a final purpose of existence,are not questions for which we look to science for answers.They are not questions about facts that the scientist will perhaps eventually get around to answering;they are questions about value and meaning—including even the value and meaning of science itself.Any answer to these questions requires imaginative speculation,a readiness to go beyond all the facts with the hope of formulating some hypothesis that will make them all more intelligible than if they were looked at scientifically:
It is part of the business of philosophy to continue the consideration of such questions,to make us aware of their importance,to examine all the approaches to them,and to keep alive that speculative interest in the universe which is apt to be killed by confining ourselves to definitely ascertainable knowledge.[5]
Human beings want and need answers to the great philosophical issues,and they expect—rightly or wrongly—that philosophers shall help them to find intelligible,even if not demonstrable,answers to them.For it is certain that if philosophers do not deal with these questions,others less responsible and less disciplined in thought will do so.Most philosophers,fully cognizant of the obstacles in the way of establishing any speculative conclusions,do try to make out the general features of things by speculating beyond the facts.Scientific knowledge is not enough;intelligence can and ought to be used in trying to see the bearing of the facts we know on ideals and hopes and on that much greater drama of which we can never really know more than a small part.Some reasonable guesses about the drama as a whole,and also about the stage,the backstage,and the wings,are needed by the actors in the human drama.The most reasonable guesses can be made by men whose imagination is disciplined by analysis and criticism,not by wild theorists,by dogmatic seers,or by men who never look beyond what is at the other end of the microscope,but by philosophers who try,at least,to see things whole.They are the responsible and disciplined speculators.