With the fission of the nucleus and the discovery of nuclear...

With the fission of the nucleus and the discovery of nuclear particles it has become clear that the true extensions of body are electrons and nuclear particles, and so on. In these cases, besides showing the extensions, the scientific theory often corrects mistakes made by philosophers. It is clear that in the above cases any change or development in the scientific theory will result in a corresponding effect on the dependent philosophical question.

However, it should be kept in mind that few philosophical questions fall within the category. Philosophy before Science It has already been said that ‘philosophy before science’ includes that group of philosophical questions that are independent from science and are therefore unaffected by any changes and developments that occur in scientific theories. This group in turn is divided into two further groups. One group does not take any scientific theory as a presupposition at all.

Here, not only philosophical questions introduced independently from scientific theories but their solution also is purely rational. No scientific theory is used in proving them and the determination of the extension of the concept employed in them is not based on scientific concepts.

The fundamentality of existence, proving the existence and attributes of God, the unity of divine essence and His attributes and actions, the possibility of resurrection predestination, freedom, and in general the most important philosophical questions are included in this group. The other group consists of those that have both a purely rational solution and also a rational-empirical solution that depend on the scientific theories and presupposes them.

It is clear that this group is also independent of science, for if developments alter the scientific theory in question and invalidate the rationalempirical solution, it will not leave the question without a solution independent of all experimentation can always be relied upon; the issue of the immateriality of the soul, for example, is one such question.

The above issues, meanwhile, clearly show that the claim made in the last chapter to the effect that philosophical propositions are a priori is only applicable to ‘philosophy before science’ , which includes the main philosophical questions, rather than to ‘philosophy after science’.