Philosophy: The Server and The Patron of science 
 

In the preface of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Wittgenstein noted that the aim of his work is to set a limit to the expression of thoughts. And the boundary between 'what can be said' and 'what cannot be said' can only be drawn in language by stating clearly what can be said (1). Philosophy is nothing but an investigation of the nature of proposition. Its main task is to clarify thoughts from a logical point of view. Wittgenstein's successors -although they diverge according to which Tractarian principles they adopted- by and large admit the thesis that philosophy is a critique of language. Aside from its great influence on the Vienna Circle, Tractatus conferred analytic philosophy a linguistic orientation that it did not have before.
Wittgenstein's picture theory of meaning, which constitutes the basis of the logical positivist view that philosophy clarifies the meaning of scientific statements, presupposes the analytic/synthetic distinction. A proposition is meaningful only if it is empirical and the one which can be inferred from another but devoid of content is tautology. A sentence which does not fall under one of these categories is nonsensical. Logical positivists had firmly captured this doctrine. They asserted that the meaning of a proposition is the method of its verification and there are necessary propositions knowable a priori. These claims are, however, dogmas of empricism for Quine. In Two Dogmas of Empiricism, he demonstrated that there is no sentence which is true purely by virtue of its meaning and thus there is no ground for the analytic/synthetic distinction. His rejection of analyticity rests on the notion of indeterminacy of meaning. This notion, together with his thesis of holism according to which a statement cannot be confirmed if it is taken in isolation, suggests that " .... no statement is immune to revision." (2)
On the basis of Quine's analysis, naturalists claim that philosophical principles and methods should not differ from that of science. Philosophical statements should be evaluated according to the rules and methods of empirical sciences. Naturalism and Quine's theses have been criticized in many respects. However, the controversial issue of the relationship of science and philosophy still awaits a solution.
When we look at today's philosophical landscape, we see that philosophy has a major division line which separates analytic from the so-called continental philosophy. Each one of these traditions has its own peculiar trends and approaches. The relationship of philosophy and science would not be clear without understanding the logic of this division. Is there a unique conception of philosophy shared by all its distinct trends or does each current of philosophy have its own peculiar method and sense of philosophy? What is common among the trends of each main tradition? These are the major questions to which we shall try to find an answer in what follows.
Philosophers diverge in their attitude towards philosophy. Some presume that the divisions in philosophy exclude each other while others believe that philosophy is primarily analytical. Dagfinn Follesdal (Dagfin Follesdal, "Analytic Philosophy: What is It and Why should One Engage in It?" in H. Glock, ed., The Rise ofanalytic Philosophy Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1997, p. 14), argues that analytic philosophy cannot be distinguished from the other trends of philosophy on the basis of doctrines and problems that it deals with or of its method of conceptual analysis. Argument and justification are the fundamental traits of analytic approach and each philosophical trend -whether it be phenomenology, existentialism or structuralism- is more or less analytic according to the degree that it involves in argumentation and justification. But Follesdal is in contradiction with himself unless he specifíes the degree of involvement in argumentation and justification. While he is propounding that argument and justification are distinguishing characteristics of analytic philosophy, he is saying that every trend of philosophy is indeed more or less analytic. This means that one cannot distinguish analytic philosophy from other trends on the basis of argument and justification because each current of philosophy, to an extent, has these features.
My thesis is that although there cannot be drawn a sharp boundary between different trends of philosophy, it is divided into two main currents with regard to its object and the way of treating that object, namely, analytic and aesthetical philosophy. Even though there is no essential trait that characterizes any one of these traditions, a family resemblance conception of general qualifications of each one enables us to distinguish one from the other. Contrary to Follesdal's claim, argument and justification are not two fundamentally distinguishing characteristics of analytlc philosophy. Heidegger (Martin Heidegger, Being and Time,New York: Harper and Row, Publishers, 1962, p. 128) provides a phenomenological justification for his concepts of 'ready-to-hand' and 'present-at-hand' by arguing Descartes' conception of the world. Similarly, Gadamer criticizes Wilhelm Dilthey's conception of human sciences as a ground for his view of hermeneutics (Hans G. Gadamer, Truth and Method, Tubingen: Mohr and Siebeck, 1975, p. 9). (In fact, Follesdal writes that to an extent phenomenology and hermeneutics have argumentative aspects but, as noted, in a contradictory way.) Nor could any one of the other characteristics which are, commonly, attributed to analytic philosophy, such as conceptual analysis or ahistoricity by itself be sufficient to distinguish it from the other trends of philosophy. Nevertheless, a distinction is plausible, as put above, on the basis of family resemblance conception of typical qualifications of analytic philosophy. An important feature of analytic philosophy is the subject/object or signifier/signified distinction -the subject treats the object of study in a synchronic relationship of present. Its main concern is directed upon 'what can be said.' It concentrates on the empirical or factual via language. In addition, it underscores logical relations among propositions and accepts ordinary language as given when analyzing its own particular problematic concepts. A work of philosopher bears the stamp of analytic if it possesses some of these qualifications.
Heidegger directed philosophers' attention to aesthetics by pointing at the similarity between the philosopher's and the poet's activity; poetic naming is an 'act of establishing.' the existent 'shines out' or is 'known as existent' when it is named. This emphasis on the cognitive rather than the hedonic aspects of aesthetic experience becomes the leading characteristic of the continental philosophy. The identification of ethics and aesthetics as one and its transcendence have also been stated in Tractatus (L.Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, 6.421). For Wittgenstein aesthetics yields reasons and in doing so it does not differ from ethics and philosophy. In G. E. Moore's words: "... he [Wittgenstein] said that the same sort of 'reasons' were given, not only in Ethics, but also in Philosophy".(G. E. Moore, "Wittgenstein's Lectures in 1930-33" in H. Osborne, ed., Aesthetics London: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 88)
The trends of philosophy which underline the primacy of aesthetic experience more or less share the following properties. The aesthetic philosophy mainly concerns with the problem of the self; the subject and the object of study are one and the same thing - the self's own experience. It is historical and constructive. It creates new meanings by renaming the entities of its own tradition. It is not interested in this or that particular truth but the transcendental one. The ethical and aesthetical coincides in this transcendence -the experience of that which is beyond appearance. J. N. Findlay expresses that "what emerges from all I am saying is the absoluteness of aesthetic values, but also their higher-order character; they attach to things through features of cognition..."( J. N. Findlay, "The Perspicuous and The Poignant: Two Aesthetic Fundamentals" in ibid., p. 104; G.E. Moore, "Wittgenstein's Lectures in 1930-33" in ibid., p. 87). Because of this transcendence, of this absoluteness, the works of aesthetic philosophy do not exclude each other; they take place side by side. Although one appears in the context of a critique of the other, justification which presupposes agreement is not important in aesthetic philosophy. Moore appeals to Wittgenstein:

... the fact that we go to see 'King Lear' by no means proves that that experience is agreeable, that fact 'is about the least important thing you can say about it.'(Moore, "Wittgenstein's Lectures in 1930-33" in ibid., p. 87.)

A work of aesthetic philosophy defines its object of study as becoming and thus escapes to give conclusive grounds for its claims; it enounces its purpose as providing a better understanding of ourselves which is also stated as the goal of a work of art (0 R. K. Elliot, "Aesthetic Theory and The Experience of Art" in ibid., p. 157). The division of philosophy as analytic and aesthetic clarifies its relation with science. Analytic philosophy deals with the meaning of scientific statements but not only for the sake of clarification. It guides and guards science when sientific claims have complex implications that exceeds the boundaries of empirical inquiry. The issue of reality of sub-atomic particles in physics, for instance, is disputed from the point of view of the realist and instrumentalist approaches of philosophy. In addition, analytic philosophy discloses the logical relations among scientific statements and tries to make them as much precise as possible. It suggests criteria for assessment of scientific assertions. This is not, however, a one-way relation. By its empirical findings, science provides inputs for philosophical discussions which aim at a deeper understanding of reality. Consider Quine's notion of 'stimulus meaning.' It rests upon the 'stimulus' concept of psychology. And inasmuch as philosophy employs findings of science as the basis of its clarifications, its statements are not immune to revision. However, the akinness of scientific and philosophical statements in terms of revisability does not amount to the sameness of philosophy and science with respect to their methods and objects of study. Anaytic philosophy differs from science in that its primary method is logico-linguistic analysis.
Aesthetic philosophy is not concerned with the empirical findings of science in the sense mentioned above. But it is in relation with science in that it gives science its basic concepts such as existential psychology and the critical theory of sociology. Heidegger holds that:

The transcendental 'generality' of the phenomenon of care and of all fundamental existentialia is, on the other hand, broad enough to present a basis on which every interpretation of Dasein which is ontical and belongs to a world view must move... (Heidegger, Being and Time, p. 244). 
Like science, aesthetic philosophy is directly interested in experience; unlike science, it is oriented towards the transcendental -not empirical- experience and alludes that its claims have 'absolute universality.' And it aims at a new synthesis with its distinct trends through a historico-critical method. Thus, while aesthetic philosophy provides science the necessari conceptual tool for its advancement, analytic philosophy mainly has a role of removing difficulties confronted in science and endeavors to make its procedures and statements precise. 

NOTES

(1) Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico Philosophicus, London: Routledge, 1922, 4.115.
(2) Willard Van Orman Quine, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in T.M.Olshewsky, ed., Problems in the Philsophy of language, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, Inc., 1969, p. 414.