The Writers' Lounge

Philosophy (real philosophy, not the watery theosophy that sometimes passes for it) is the forerunner of science. Any new area - physics in Aristotle's time, or psychology in Freud's - begins with people compiling a body of evidence based on their senses and experiments, and constructing theories based on logic and sense. Only once the body of evidence is great enough and stable enough does the subject begin to attract the label of 'science'.

In Aristotle's time the immaterial - the metaphysical - included the elements. In Freud's it was mind and personality. Now it's more likely to be the possibility of non-physical being and survival of death and that's where the scientists get twitchy, I think. They need to bear their own roots in mind and let it pan out; it'll either turn out to be like physics and flourish, or like alchemy and die. Either is fine, provided it is properly observed and tested along the way.