2. Philosophy - Stefano Franchi

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T HE END OF PHILOSOPHY
The goal to be reached is clearly set: physics will have to provide “a complete, consis-
tent and unified theory of the physical interactions which would describe all possible ob-
servations” (1). Hawking is quite confident that such a theory might be found and actually
reviews the possible candidates pointing his attention on a specific supergravity theory as
the most likely one. More calculations are needed in order to test the theory, he affirms, and
if it “survives these tests, it will probably be some more years before we develop computa-
tional methods that will enable us to make predictions and before we can account for the
initial conditions of the universe as well as the local physical laws”(24). But once these two
last tasks have been taken care of, physics can well be considered closed.
Of course, the similarity between Hegel's and Hawking's epistemologies, proves very
little, since nothing excludes that they both be wrong. My previous quotation from the
opening lecture of the distinguished Cambridge professor serves a rather different purpose:
it points to the “plausibility” of Hegel's view of science. In other words, it shows that He-
gel's view of scientific progress, although couched in rather unfashionable terms, is actually
quite close to science’s self-understanding. More generally, this common and shared view
of science’s progress serves a broader goal: it points to a possible interpretation of the re-
lationship between a discipline and its end that could solve—or rather dissolve— the par-
adoxical relation between philosophy, history and truth. We understand, therefore, how this
view of science might become an attractive model that anyone wishing to carry philosophy
beyond the Scyllas and Carybdis of truth and history may want to adopt.
This remark was necessary in order to get some clarity on what is at stake in the He-
gelian discussion of “science’s progress.” In the present context of the Lectures, Hegel’s fo-
cus is philosophy, and philosophy's problems, only. If his argument brings in science it is
only because he wants to discuss a possible solution of the paradox that would consist in
pulling philosophy toward this scientific model of progress. Hegel’s science, we might say,
is philosophy in disguise: it is a certain view of philosophy as a scientific discipline that
comes to the fore under the clothes of Euclidean geometry. What we have to discuss, then,
is not the intrinsic value of the philosophy of science that can be extracted from Hegel's cur-
sory remarks in the Introduction. The issue is the role played by this view of science within