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ON THE PHILOSPHIC FOUNDATION OF SCIENCE 

Charles C. NWEKE 

 

Abstract 

This paper comes as an attempt to restate the place of Philosophy in the evolution 

of human development and history. It represents the bid to address seeming, subtle 

and vocal moves to denigrate Philosophy amidst the reckoned progress of science 

and technology and more worrisome, deny it of an age long title- Mother of all 

Sciences. The paper reechoes, by tracing the origin of Science, the fundamental 

role of the mother Philosophy by being and begetting Science as its ancient 

offspring.   It equally articulates the time and circumstances that informed the 

independence of the basic disciplines of Science from Philosophy. The paper’s 

synopsis is the position that all the fields of science have their remote foundation 

in Philosophy. 

Keywords: Philosophy, Science, Ancient Era, Modern Period 

 

1.  Introduction 

The attempt to reaffirm the philosophic foundation of science, at the present era of 

seeming over glorification of science based on its huge advancement would 

portend a sought for intellectual trouble especially of science scholars. 

Nevertheless, the place of philosophy as the crib of human knowledge, 

development and civilization remains an undiluted fact hinged on known and 

recorded history. Science and the fields with which it is currently known, this 

paper posits, did not begin as independent area/s of knowledge. It was rather 

birthed much after initial philosophers’ endeavours at wondering to understand the 

universe and the fundamental element/s with which it is constituted.  

 

There have been concerted and subtle attempt to denigrate this historical fact, 

thereby denying the place of philosophy in foundation of human knowledge 

inquiry. These attempts present either as arguments that the known foremost 

philosophers of ancient time were basically scientists or that philosophy is part of 

science. There are even claims by individual fields of science to be the harbinger 

of all knowledge. 

 

The content of this paper begins with a concise articulation of the origin of science 

tracing that history from the time of ancient Greek thinkers. This is followed by a 

section on how some basic areas of science were studied as philosophy. The 

section on the philosophy as the mother of all science was preceded by  an 

exposition of period of independence of science from philosophy.  

 

2. Origin of Science 

History of science cannot be objectively chronicled without reference to its 

philosophical origin. That science has philosophical foundation is not a product of 

mere philosophic speculation, but a historical verifiable fact. What is today known 



                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(1), 2021 

48 
 

as science and its specific areas began with the ancient and foremost known 

philosophers’ attempt at inquiry into the universe in the bid to uncover the basic 

elements that constitute reality. The reckoned beginning of philosophy around 

sixth century BCE saw the emergence of the known first scientists of Western 

history. The ancient Greek thinkers such as Thales, Anaximander, Parmenides, 

Heraclitus, etc popularly known as the Pre-Socratic philosophers, presented the 

first recorded basic element of nature- water, air, fire, earth. Apart from proposing 

these basic elements, they provided the initial direction for the definition, meaning 

and future of the entire corpus of human knowledge based either on reason or/and 

sense data. Study of Classical Philosophy is insightful in this regard. 

 

Classical philosophy studies the fundamental problems concerning 

human existence through the eyes of our intellectual ancestors. Many 

thinkers from Classical times were pioneers of our modern 

philosophical and scientific ideas. The earliest beginnings of 

philosophy are traced back to the sixth century B.C.E., when the first 

scientists of Western history, the Pre-Socratics – among them Thales, 

Heraclitus and Parmenides – advanced revolutionary theories 

concerning the natural world, human knowledge and humans’ 

relationship with the gods. (www.classics.pitt.edu) 

 

 

It is very important to note that the ancient philosophical thoughts and works of 

preceding thinkers especially Pythagoras, Democritus, Euclid, etc led to 

discoveries which informed many known and surviving scientific theories and 

fields. After the discovery of the four basic elements initiated by Thales, the next 

point of enquiry was the question of ‘form’ which saw Pythagoras propounding a 

theory about number which gave birth to mathematics. In his “History of Science”, 

Williams(2018) submits that: 

The problem of form was first attacked systematically by the philosopher 

and cult leader Pythagoras in the 6th century BCE. Legend has it that 

Pythagoras became convinced of the primacy of number when he realized 

that the musical notes produced by a monochord were in simple ratio to the 

length of the string. Qualities (tones) were reduced to quantities (numbers 

in integral ratios). Thus was born mathematical physics, for this discovery 

provided the essential bridge between the world of physical experience and 

that of numerical relationships. Number provided the answer to the 

question of the origin of forms and qualities. 

 

One of the most popular mathematical theories, the Pythagorean theorem credited 

to Pythagoras, the first person to identify philosophy as love of wisdom, ranks 

among his other discoveries. The five regular solids, sphericality of the earth, the 

theory of proportions, the Pythagorean tuning, division of the globe into five 

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Pythagoras
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/Legend
https://www.britannica.com/science/number-system
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/integral
https://www.britannica.com/science/mathematical-physics


Nweke                                                                           On the Philosophic Foundation of … 

49 
 

climatic zones and the identity of the morning and evening stars as planet Venus 

are equally notable scientific discoveries of Pythagoras.    

 

 

In further response to the primary element the universe is constituted, Democritus 

championed the invention of atoms and proposed that matter is governed by 

atomic principles. Thus: 

 

 Everything is composed of “atoms”, which are physically, but not geometrically, 

indivisible 

 Between atoms, there lies empty space 

 Atoms are indestructible 

 Atoms have always been, and always will be, in motion 

 There are an infinite number of atoms, and kinds of atoms, which differ in shape, 

and size. (Williams, 2015) 

Matt Williams(2015) captured the invention of Democritus in these words: 

 

And along the way, many names stand out as examples of people who 

achieved breakthroughs and helped lay the foundations of our modern 

understanding. One such person is Democritus, an ancient Greek 

philosopher who is viewed by many as being the “father of modern 

science”. This is due to his theory of universe that is made up of tiny 

“atoms”, which bears a striking resemblance to modern atomic theory. 

 

A critical lens on these submissions could engender the argument tilting 

towards negating the philosophic claim of origin of science. It could be 

thought that those pioneers of science were only coincidentally philosophers 

whose scientific discoveries and theories were independent products of their 

scientific thinking without any recourse to and different from philosophy. It 

could be argued that they were doing science without calling it science. 

However, to the disappointment of such thought inclination, scientific 

outputs of the thinkers were products mainly of their metaphysical, 

cosmological and epistemological enquiries about what is,what it is like,the 

universe, truth and knowledge. In fact, the basic areas of science like 

mathematics, chemistry, physics, astronomy, medicine were studied in the 

ancient Greek era as part of philosophy. Spirkin avers to this effect that, 

“Many general guiding ideas that lie at the foundation of modern science were first 

enunciated by the perceptive force of philosophical thought.”  In fact, “Hellenic 

science was built upon the foundations laid by Thales and Pythagoras. It reached 

its zenith in the works of Aristotle and Archimedes.”(Williams, 2018) 

 

 



                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(1), 2021 

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3. Science was studied as Philosophy 
The ancient philosophers of ages were not only inventors of science; they 

established avenues for cross fertilization of ideas and imparting of knowledge. 

They created academies and became foundational teachers of known history. In 

that era, Greek academies were terrains mainly for study of Philosophy. In fact, 

“The latest theories of the unity of matter, motion, space and time, the unity of the 

discontinuous and continuous, the principles of the conservation of matter and 

motion, the ideas of the infinity and inexhaustibility of matter were stated in a 

general form in philosophy.”(Spirkin) Aspects of science including mathematics, 

geometry, and medicine were studied as Philosophy.  Dr. Alannah Freer in writing 

“A History of Science” captures this point succinctly. He stated that: 

 

Pythagoras was the first scientist recorded to have taught the science of the 

Ageless Wisdom through mathematics, astronomy, geometry, harmonics, 

medicine and numerology in a form that has survived the test of time and is 

still recognisable today. 

 

After the time of the early ancient Philosophers, one of the most popular Greek 

philosophers of Socratic period, Plato emerged with popular philosophic and 

scientific achievements. He is known to have established an academy in quest for 

truth and propagation of knowledge. Reflecting on his contribution to science, 

Saugat Adhikari(2019) notes: 

 

Plato played a vital role in encouraging the Greek intelligentsia to 

regard science as a theory. His Academy taught arithmetic as part of 

philosophy, as Pythagoras had done, and the first 10 years of a course at the 

Academy included the study of geometry, astronomy, and music. 

 

The philosophical thoughts and works of Aristotle, after Plato, provided a 

redirection for human inquiry using scientific means. He invented logic and 

observation as crucial tools for the knowledge of the natural world. His other 

achievements in the areas of science reverberated so vigorously that he is 

considered by many scholars as the main inventor of science as well as the first 

real scientist. In the work, The Lagoon: How Aristotle Invented Science Armand 

Marie Leroi (2014) posits that: 

Aristotle is considered by many to be the first scientist, although the term 

postdates him by more than two millennia. In Greece in the fourth century 

BC, he pioneered the techniques of logic, observation, inquiry and 

demonstration. These would shape Western philosophical and scientific 

culture through the Middle Ages and the early modern era, and would 

influence some aspects of the natural sciences even up to the eighteenth 

century. 

Anselm H. Amadilo and Anthony J.P. Kenny(2020) also hold the view that: 

http://www.unimedliving.com/serge-benhayon/unimed-publishing/our-lineage.html


Nweke                                                                           On the Philosophic Foundation of … 

51 
 

 

Aristotle’s intellectual range was vast, covering most of the sciences and 

many of the 

arts,including biology, botany, chemistry, ethics, history, logic, metaphysic

s, rhetoric, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, physics, poetics, 

political theory, psychology, and zoology. He was the founder of formal 

logic, devising for it a finished system that for centuries was regarded as 

the sum of the discipline; and he pioneered the study of zoology, both 

observational and theoretical, in which some of his work remained 

unsurpassed until the 19th century. 

 

 

In the time of Aristotle, science did not exist with the name ‘science’, rather it 

existed as natural philosophy. Its fields as they are known today were studied as 

philosophy.  Steve Joyce (2018) philosopher and writer captured it thus: 

What we now call “science” was predated by something called “natural 

philosophy,” which attempted to infer what is true about the natural 

universe mainly by means of reasoning based on casual naked-eye 

observation. In the 4th century BCE, Aristotle believed that all the 

universe’s secrets could eventually be deduced using logic based on the 

knowledge of his time. He then went on to deduce that the earth stands 

motionless at the center of the universe, while the planets (including the 

sun and moon) and stars were embedded in rotating, concentric, hollow 

crystal spheres, with the earth at their common center. 

 

4. Modern Period 

Apart from the foundational contributions of ancient philosophers, 

philosophy/science relations continued to reflect in the thoughts of many modern 

thinkers. Rene Descartes, the father of modern philosophy, and other notable 17th 

and 18th century philosophers contributed some popular scientific theories. 

Descartes, for instance, proposed the universal conservation of motion. Baruch 

Spinoza’s substance monism contains in his theory of monads, basis for universal 

scientific determinism. Galileo is known for his popular theory of the shape of the 

earth. In the preceding times of the enlightenment, Newton and Einstein’s theories 

of absolute space and relativity respectively are responses to the philosophical 

inquiry about space and time.  In the words of A. Spirkin: 

We may also recall the Cartesian reflex and the philosopher's proposition 

on the conservation of motion in the universe. On the general philosophical 

plane Spinoza gave grounds for the universal principle of determinism. The 

idea of the existence of molecules as complex particles consisting of atoms 

was developed in the works of the French philosopher Pierre Gassendi and 

also Russia's Mikhail Lomonosov. Philosophy nurtured the hypothesis of 

the cellular structure of animal and vegetable organisms and formulated the 

idea of the development and universal connection of phenomena and the 

https://www.britannica.com/science/biology
https://www.britannica.com/science/botany
https://www.britannica.com/science/chemistry
https://www.britannica.com/topic/ethics-philosophy
https://www.britannica.com/topic/history
https://www.britannica.com/topic/logic
https://www.britannica.com/topic/metaphysics
https://www.britannica.com/topic/metaphysics
https://www.britannica.com/topic/rhetoric
https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-mind
https://www.britannica.com/topic/philosophy-of-science
https://www.britannica.com/science/physics-science
https://www.britannica.com/science/psychology
https://www.britannica.com/science/zoology
https://www.britannica.com/topic/formal-logic
https://www.britannica.com/topic/formal-logic
https://www.quora.com/profile/Steve-Joyce-1


                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(1), 2021 

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principle of the material unity of the world. Lenin formulated one of the 

fundamental ideas of contemporary natural science—the principle of the 

inexhaustibility of matter—upon which scientists rely as a firm 

methodological foundation.  

 

5. Independence of Science from Philosophy 
Various studies have shown that disciplines of science, from antiquity continued to be 

taken as philosophy for many centuries. The point of independence of science commenced 

with the gradual coming of the enlightenment age. Modern science was actually born in 

17th century with the invention of instruments like microscope, telescope, barometer and 

clock. Modern Biology and Chemistry began to be developed as independent fields in 18th 

century.  Steve Joyce (2018) philosopher and writer holds that, “…the improved discipline 

continued to be called “natural philosophy” until the 19th century, when the word 

“science” was adopted to replace it.”  The acknowledgement, among scholars of 

science, of the philosophical foundation of science is not in doubt. American 

Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS) maintain in their “History and 

Philosophy of Science” that: 

 

Until the 19th century, natural science was primarily known as “natural 

philosophy”, and contemporary philosophy still maintains deep 

connections with science. Some of the greatest intellectuals of all time were 

both scientists and philosophers. In the 17th century, Descartes, Leibniz, 

and Pascal developed modern science and articulated its philosophical 

foundations.  

 

 

6. Teaching History of Science in Institutions 

The teaching of history of science in any institution of learning cannot be complete 

without the basic crucial account of how the initial philosophic endeavours of 

ancient thinkers shaped science. Department of Classics, University of Pittsburg, 

USA, for instance, presents in its study course ‘History of Science’ that:   

The ancient Greeks were the first mathematicians and scientists of the 

West. Thinkers such as Thales, Anaximander, Pythagoras and 

Empedocles attempted to make sense of the world by studying the 

evidence they found in it. Anaximander proposed that the earth was a 

solitary body, floating free and unsupported in the universe, and 

produced one of the first maps of the world. Empedocles was among 

the first to believe that the world consisted of diverse material 

elements acted upon by forces of attraction and repulsion. The atomic 

theory of matter begins with the Greeks. Euclid remains one of the 

most influential mathematicians of all time. His contemporary 

Archimedes was a famous inventor and is also credited with 

discovering a geometrical technique which anticipated calculus and 

the fact that the surface and volume of a sphere is 2/3 that of its 

circumscribing cylinder. Through early astronomy, the Greeks 

developed the idea of mathematized science. In the field of medicine, 

https://www.quora.com/profile/Steve-Joyce-1


Nweke                                                                           On the Philosophic Foundation of … 

53 
 

they began with case histories and folk remedies, and ended up with 

an understanding of the nerves, the ability to patch up wounded 

gladiators, and even the ability to remove cataracts with eye surgery. 

They invented the first steam engine, vending machine, automatic 

doors, and more. And they sustained glorious cities with over a 

million inhabitants without using electricity, fossil fuels, gunpowder 

or nuclear fission as sources of energy.  

 

In articulating ‘A Brief history of Science’, The Open University, Scotland 

submitted that: 

The first people to try and develop the theory behind their observations 

were the Greeks: people such as Pythagoras, who concentrated on a 

mathematical view of the world. Similarly, Aristotle and Plato developed 

logical methods for examining the world around them. It was the Greeks 

who first suggested that matter was made up of atoms - fundamental 

particles that could not be broken down further. 

 

7. Conclusion: Philosophy as the Mother and Science of Sciences 

The exposition so far has shown how philosophy birthed science. Thus it should 

not just a mere claim when people hear the expression, ‘Philosophy is the mother 

of all sciences’. Philosophy indeed is! Not only did Philosophy lay the foundation 

for the existence of science, it nurtured science to some level of maturity before its 

various disciplines sprouted independently. Nevertheless, it is to be noted that even 

at independence, development and advancement, disciplines of science have not 

actually departed from the basic philosophic nature of inquiry into reality. In other 

words, studies of science are remotely studies of philosophy. The area of sciences’ 

departure from philosophy is the method of science. While philosophy maintains 

its central character of criticality together with sometimes being speculative, 

science thrives on empirical explorations.  

Philosophy is also reckoned as science of sciences in its role of keeping the reins 

of sciences in continuous rational check. Philosophy understudies every field of 

science and with its critical essence and other methods, understands the possibility 

of those fields operating outside their essences and expectations. In other words: 

Philosophy may be called the "science of sciences" probably in the sense 

that it is, in effect, the self-awareness of the sciences and the source from 

which all the sciences draw their world-view and methodological 

principles, which in the course of centuries have been honed down into 

concise forms. (Spirkin) 

Thus, there is philosophy of virtually every other discipline with the task of 

questioning their fundamental assumptions and in its normative or prescriptive 

nature, multiplies options for those other disciplines. So in the academic field of 



                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(1), 2021 

54 
 

philosophy, one sees areas like philosophy of science, philosophy of mathematics, 

philosophy of medicine, etc.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



Nweke                                                                           On the Philosophic Foundation of … 

55 
 

 

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                                                                       Aquino Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 1(1), 2021 

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