Philosophy needed - more than ever

Today we need philosophy in social research more than ever.

First, people are so educated and knowledgeable that our world is already overloaded with knowledge. Enlightening is no more sufficient, people need to understand how they understand and learn to see void and exclusion in the middle of their Enlightenment.

Secondly, accumulated knowledge has not built a holistic understanding of reality but fed controversy between incompatible value systems (of universals) within which this knowledge emerges. These controversies reach beyond rationality of scientific horizon and require trans-disciplinary considerations, even trans-scientific considerations, such as in the case of Copenhagen consensus, in physics in 1920's when scientific controversies are overcome with evaluative interpretation.

Finally, philosophy is especially indispensable as a foundation for self-reflective science which must become deconstructively creative. Self-reflective science is creative not only in a superficial way (discovering new truths) but also in a deep way because it is able to question its own foundations and deconstructing void in own truth claims.

Source: Bojan Radej, Excerpt from a book Social Complexity and Complex Society, Forthcoming