The goal of philosophy is to address the "big questions" which do not
fall into other disciplines: how we should act (ethics), what exists
(metaphysics), how we know what we know (epistemology), and how we
should reason (logic). Originating from Greek, the word philosophy means
"love of wisdom."
Historically, philosophy has been a catch-all
for academic subjects which don’t fit into the traditional disciplines
of science and the humanities. However, this doesn’t mean it is
disconnected from these areas: in fact, the relationship of philosophy
and science is almost as close as the relationship between math and
science, and many masters of literature have also started philosophical
movements. Many academic disciplines have a corresponding philosophy
behind them: philosophy of science, for instance, or philosophy of
history. Less formally, a philosophy is just a way of thinking about
something.
Philosophy is thought to have truly begun under
Socrates, an ancient Greek philosopher who is considered the most famous
and important philosopher of all time. He developed the Socratic
method, a general technique for looking at philosophical problems based
on definition, analysis, and synthesis. Back in Socrates’ time and up
until the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century, philosophy and
science were often practiced by the same people and considered two parts
of the same discipline. Science was called "natural philosophy" –
philosophy about the world.
In the domain of ethics, consider
questions like the following: is it ethical to save the life of a
murderer, if he may kill again? Philosophers debate such questions for
hours, creating doctrines to help organize and justify their own
opinions. Within the domain of ethics, there is disagreement about
whether or not there exists an objective morality: an objectively
correct way to do things that is superior to any other. At the opposite
end of the spectrum: is everything relative? If morality is arbitrary,
why should we have one at all?
Metaphysics looks at the first
causes and principles of things, as well as the relationship between
consciousness and the world. Many questions previously considered
metaphysical, like "how did the universe come into existence?" have
fallen into the domain of science, being revealed through hypotheses and
experiment. Some metaphysical questions, however, may not have
scientific answers. Some scientists would argue back that a
non-scientific answer to such questions is not really an answer at all.
Epistemology
looks at the roots of knowledge. Since our minds are just
representations of the external world rather than perfect reflections of
it, how can we know anything outside of our minds? Answering this
question is the responsibility of epistemology. Like metaphysics,
epistemology often overlaps with science or statistics, especially in
the area of probability theory.
Logic is what kickstarted
mathematics, and it continues to play an important role in many
disciplines. Through probability theory, logic can be formalized in a
more quantitative way, and these findings have been applied to the
creation of more intelligent software programs. One day, studies in
logic may lead to a design for a logical machine.
