Yes, it has crossed my mind that science could be potentially more deadly in the future. It actually can destroy the human race. But then, it's rather unlikely that it would happen for fun or profit of the scientists. More likely, some philosophical idea would be in the driving seat, using science for its ideological ends. Isn't it how it usually happens?
And historically, there were many cases when philosophy managed great feats of destruction without much help from science. Famine in Ukraine, gulags, the Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot, these were all low tech endeavours resulting in death of millions. As a matter of fact, some of them were rather anti-science. And I am not even talking about social and cultural damage here.
No, not really. Traditionally what happens is that an individual or a group of people desires to have all the power and therefore they use both science and philosophy as the means to achieve their ends. Science for practical things or foundations and philosophy for "people management" if necessary. However all of this combined is more of a politics than philosophy if we judge by definitions.
However I generally find your perspective to be incorrect because lowtech and hightech are both science. Even the tribal people from 20 000 years ago when they used stone knives or they were enhancing their spears they used science, since science is knowledge about physical world. In other words famine in Ukraine would not be possible without agricultural science that made all those crops possible in the first place (I have grown a part of my own food so I know that this isn't as simple as some people imagine it). Gulags are also impossible without science since in order to build them you need metallurgy, mining, electricity, plenty of construction materials and tools, fossil fuels and their complex production etc. Also the current volume of killings through history would not be possible without weapons and weapons for thousands of years are nothing more than applied science. Especially after the point when metallurgy came into play a few thousand years ago, since finding, extracting, separating and processing of metal ore isn't trivial business at all. In a sense all cultural revolutions are the same case since without science there would be no society and you would have people freezing in the caves. Therefore there would be no philosophy as well, which is basically revision of what was done so far. However the world can exist without someone doing the revision of it. In the other words cultural revolutions generally are direct consequence of technological development (science), since technology has allowed someone to take too big piece of "the cake". Therefore I claim that people who are not scientists or engineers don't trully understand what hard science really is and how important it actually is. Since just about everything stands on it and therefore it is precondition to have everything else.
However from more modern perspetive:
As a matter of fact the number one reason why this world is falling apart is because we made huge technological progress while our upper management didn't change all that much through centuries. Since main decision makers are completely scientifically illiterate and know nothing about: Medicine, food production, construction, chemistry, energetics, engineering etc. What makes them completely incompetent to lead the world built on the products of technological progress. Since their understanding of what is really going on is limited since their worldviews are built on money dynamics and cheap ideology.
If you want concrete examples what science is capable of: take a look what robot revolution is bringing when it comes to economy and money flow. With robots/machines as the bulk of workforce you can throw huge chunks of philosophy, economy and politics into trash. Also take a look at what computers did and how they allowed the creation of digital money and global market ... and where that leads. Evolution is challanging of religion. The same can be said about environmental science that challanges many of the dogmas that existed for thousands of years, since it proves that we can fundamentally change this planet. In other words through technological development the social power of science will only grow compared with other aspects of society.
People are attracted to philosophy since it is more human focused and less abstract but science is where the real power is (especially if politics or common sense stand behind it). The typical philosopher can't: assest the quality of ore rich site, they don't know any interactions between human body and meds or how deseases develope, they don't know which building materials are better and more fire proof, they can't make a detailed analysis of danger that objects in outer space posses (they may not even know that such objects exist), they don't know how to cope with droughts, they can't asses safe from unsafe nuclear plant, they don't know how to make a car and what materials you need for that, they don't know how to maintain powerlines, most of them probably never even studied geo sciences and how Earth's systems actually work etc etc. Therefore when you draw the bottom line it is questionable if classical/typical philosophers should be included into decision making since their knowledge of the problems and procedures at hand is very limited and therefore they are likely to miss the key point(s), make bad judgement and focus on the wrong things. In other words we are living in the world where a scientist has to be a philosopher and scientist at the same time, since the philosopher lacks the knowledge to keep up with most things (and therefore they can't really be too dangerous, unless of course politics decides to give them a hand, however even politics is standing on science).
Therefore if science trully decides to destroy this world for whatever the reason there is very little what others can do about it. Since hard science is the foundation on which everything is build on and therefore it has the means to push things into practice, while others can't do that without the help of hard science or applying of it. As someone once said: There is only one reason why this planet wasn't ravaged by deadly bacteria and that is "The ethics of generic engineers" (and for this scenario you probably don't need more than a dozen brilliant minds that are simply bored).
You might be right about politics being the most destructive, but the thread is about science and philosophy. If we were to add more nodes, it wouldn't be a triangle, but at least a pentagon - Economy and Religion can surely hold their own in the competition.
That occured to me but I am from the ex-communist country and I consider both Religion and Economy to be just the extensions of the Politics. After all my government nationalized 20% of GDP in a single move just a few months ago ... and they don't plan to stop there.
Which do you prefer philosophy or science and most importantly, why?
