is science or philosophy better at solving problems and improving society

I"m going to start my final argument by explaining the fundamental difference between philosophy and science. The important question that these fields ask is different. Philosophy asks the question, "why?" This meaning that the answer needs to have some purpose or meaning like my opponent stated. Science however asks the question of, "how?" Science purely seeks to know the truth. Science seeks to gain knowledge and understand the world. This, philosophy does not do. "Why?" means that there will never be a time when the answer is unknown. Someone will always have the answer and if we just listen to him" science isn't one mans opinion. Science is tested fact, while philosophy is always justifiable. In today"s world we are failing. Over one billion people are in extreme poverty and every life support system on our planet is in decline. [3][4] There are hundreds of different philosophies out there that are all competing with each other for support and effecting society. This type of structure is harming us. Religions (which are some of the largest philosophies) are lobbying against stem cell research [1] that could same millions of lives and cure the worst diseases in the world like cancer, diabetes, and ALS. Oil companies do the same thing with renewable energy [2] that can provide clean energy to this entire planet without continually consuming resources. These problems would not arise if today"s society shared a scientific worldview. The methods of science would prevent misguided information. It does it with repeatable evidence that is gained from observation and experiment. Understand that the laws of science have always been there. Gravity caused objects to fall before well before an apple fell on Newton"s head. He discovered gravity he did not invent it. Newton didn't ask why the apple fell. He asked how. I want to address the biggest flaw with my opponent"s previous argument because it clear he got something backwards. He made the claim that "Improving society ought to be measured based off of it's citizens happiness and moral conviction"Happiness is the most important for societal welfare, and this is something philosophy achieves better through giving people a purpose." Humans if anything react to their environment. If we live in a broken system then we will not be happy. Science hinges on accurate measurement and it would recognize the impotence of happiness. Currently we have a measurement for societal success called GDP. It"s complete economic philosophy. Economics itself is a philosophy, it just has math implanted into it so can become somewhat manageable. GDP measures money and products, but does not measure any form of public health. We could use the methods of science in society to discover that public health is the ultimate measure of progress. Factors such as happiness and nutrition, disease, infant mortality, physical health, and even education are what truly make a society prosperous. [4] Science therefore does improve happiness because it truly recognizes the real factors of progress and can improve our societal environment, and a healthy environment is what makes people happy, but again philosophy collapses onto itself when implemented on the large scale. Science doesn't tell people how to find happiness like philosophy, but it gives them the ability to. In his previous argument my opponent stated that "he refuses to look at the effects of philosophy on an individual scale." The fact is philosophy can be harmful to people"s personal health because it can control them. Japan is one of the highest suicidal countries in the world, [5] and it"s because of their extremely strong philosophy of honor. Japan has even suffered from deaths from exhaustion because of their strong philosophy on hard work [6]. Philosophy many times will instruct happiness to someone and seek to control how they live. We've seen the dangers of philosophy because of the tragedies committed by totalitarian regimes that were able to take philosophies to extreme measure and sometimes even fool there citizens into believing they were happy when they were far below the standards of living in any other country. The second point my opponent made that I am going to address is when he stated "Throughout history they provided the foundation for legal systems that help us determine what can and cannot be accepted"It's why we enforce certain laws, and it's why we are able to protect people" science would tackle this in a different way. It would eliminate the need for a philosophy to keep order. Scientist make goals that are to solve problems, while politicians use philosophy and make laws that only service the problem. Today we have a law that says we cannot drink and drive, but people still get into cars drunk and kill people. This can be solved easily by a car that can drive itself. Autonomous cars exist today but of course there is no way to provide one to every one that needs it because of our current system restrictions. My opponent later used the example of stealing, but the problem again is that people still steal. The law that"s in place doesn't prevent that, and the reality is that this is going to be intrinsic to any society that has a significant wealth gap or poverty. As I said before people react to their environment, but we have the technical means to provide all the necessary factors for living, including happiness thus removing any motive to steal. This is solving a problem. Poverty is the number one killer in all of history, but today we have the technical means to eliminate it, but we don"t because of a system that predicates on the political philosophy that has now become outdated to our current technological advancement. There are branches of science that deal with things other that technology (which is something I feel my opponent has overlooked). There are branches that can use the methods of science to truly solve poverty and other problems. Branches like sociology or psychology that deals with the cause and effect of policy and events society and of personal human behavior. It"s this type of work that can create a system based on science that creates real progress and prosperity. I"m not saying that saying that decisions should be the opposite of what"s moral. I"m not saying that decisions that are moral are bad. What I want to show is that the best decision does not predicate on morality, but evidence. Our technical ability should be our reality, but the misguided nature and hyper-pluralism of philosophy prevents us from doing so. I would like to say tanks to my opponent. This couldn't have technically happened without you. And you have done a fine job. [1] http://www.huffingtonpost.com... [2] http://www.nytimes.com... [3] World Bank [4] World Health Organization [5] http://www.washingtonpost.com... [6] Freakonomics