Saturday, May 26, 2007

About Philosophy

When we say Philosophy most of the people think that we are talking about general meanings with no meaning!! Most of the people connect Philosophy with Eastern Philosophies as Buddhism, Hinduism or connects it with metaphysical concepts.
On this article i will try to show the significance of Philosophy and how it relates with Science.
Philosophy, as any concept, has an evolutional course throughout history.
The word Philosophy is a Greek word that comes from the combination of the two Greek words "Philos" that means friend and "Sophia" that means wisdom: The friend of wisdom or better love of the wisdom.
In the farthest historical years philosophy developed in China and India. At the 7th and 6th B.C. century philosophy appeared in Greece where it was developed on a high level. On the medieval, Theology took the place of Philosophy and it stoped to be a separate science. The 15th and 16th century was the starting point for an important turn in the history of Philosophy: The entrance of the experimental science. Science was developed fast. This encourages the appearance of different materialistic philosophies.
At the begginig, on ancient Greece, Philosphy meant the total of the human knowledge. The social, natural and other parts of the human knowledge were part of the philosophy. The development of Science on the Renaissance lead all this "sections" of philosophy to get their independence and become independent sciences. From now on philosophy is a particular region of knowledge. Its cause is to process a weltanschauung and found it.
The difference between philosophy and particular sciences is that science is studying certain parts of the universe while philosophy takes all this parts and tries to found a global weltanschauung. It links between all specific sciences, it depends on them, and gives the global laws.
There are many kinds of Philosophy: Rationalism, Platonism, Relativism, Materialism...etc. Every Philosophy must answer one BASIC question that comes in two parts: I. what is being first, The Nature (the matter) or the spirit (the logic, the idea, the consciousness) and II. What is the relation between our knowledge and the universe, are we able to know the real universe (cosmos).
Depending on the answer of the basic question of the philosophy all the kinds of philosophy converge on two kinds: Idealism and Materialism.
Idealism says that the first is the human consciousness, God or "the absolute idea". Some idealists say that we can know the universe and others say that we can not (agnosticism) .
Materialism says that the first is The nature (the matter) and then comes the consciousness. It says that human beings are able to know the world that we live on.
The war between Materialism and Idealism on the plane of ideas is directly connected with the war on the social plane. Throughout history Materialism was the theory of the oppressed classes and Idealism the theory of oppressively classes.

REFERENCES:
  1. Small Philosophical dictionary. Rozental M., Gioudin P. Angnostidi editions (Greek).
  2. Elementary beginnings of philosophy. Politzer G. Gnoseis editions (Greek) 1984.
  3. The basic beginnings of marxist Philosophy, Sychrony epochy editions (Greek) 2005.
  4. www.wikipedia.org