I was reading an interview with John Searle about Wittgenstein, yesterday, and it made me recall why I got more involved with philosophy despite a deep calling to it that reaches far back into my tenderest youth where I always asked 'why?' and kept on dazzling my family with imaginative arguments and observations about what life was about.
The interview made me recall that a similar thing as happened with Wittgenstein happened with me. You see, I was reading medical science in the University and while doing my learning I kept on asking questions, questions that were at the foundations of what I was learning, the background of it, and it bothered my learning somewhat. It was a similar thing that occurred in Secondary School but this time I couldn't just evade them, it was like "if you're meant to do it, you have to". I didn't even bother to ask my teachers in the University because I knew they wouldn't have the answers and I didn't want to shame them. So, I went off on my own and taught myself it - Philosophy. As can be expected, it was in no systematic way but let me say emphatically that the first philosophers learned in no systematic way, the Platonian Academy was no systematic school, the Socratic which preceded the Platonian also wasn't (the Socratic was just a loose collection of friends who liked to argue, it is quite amusing how they related to each other, Socrates talking about "I will think on it till I have defeated it" :-)), even though there was an abundance of other systematic schools like the Sophists'. (Wittgenstein was studying Engineering when he got more interested in the foundations of the Mathematics he was studying, he was lucky that his professors who couldn't answer his questions redirected him; well, I didn't do that at all so I can't say anything negative or positive about mine :-))
Discussing this with myself, the following came to mind: some people have suggested putting Philosophy away and using it for practical purposes, Wittgenstein himself made such a suggestion. Thing is Philosophy is not something we come to meet and use, we create it. It is we as men who ask the questions and we label them as Philosophical. If we are to make it practical, we miss the point of its existence, it is already practical, serving to quell our doubts as men and to help as grow our minds. I am not against the 'practical' orientation, no, far from it, I am just switching the perspective to make the field of view wider and more truthful.
What does all this matter to our little discussion here on Science? Well, I was learning Science when my concern was more with the foundations of things, our present system doesn't allow us to switch courses, it appears that our system is an instrument of confinement, intentionally constructed to intimidate, then tame and depress the souls that live within it. It's as if it is a cyanide factory come to be built around us humans..a tear comes to my eye. What I seek to say is this: I wasn't moving away from Science, I was just going below Science to better construct its base, in another world, that would be a good thing because I am an aid to Science, I am being a link between Philosophy and Science, helping to produce that comprehensive network of knowledge that is originally the case when it is in our minds and not the disjointed one we have on the ground. There was a time when these things were more in fashion as I derive from accounts of former days where it was more a 'primitive' setting but it tells us how much we have lost.
My friend, Simple Kay, was telling me about an article where they were saying our culture is being eroded and so forth. I said at that time that it was bogus with the thought that "change is necessary" but on second thought, it is this "our culture really has slipped into the gutter, we have lost our culture of questioning which is quite tied to our spirituality". While I thought of this, my mind went to the issue of the arrival of Christianity; just how much was lost by that arrival? I am not saying, like some people, that we should jettison that noble religion, far from it, I am only asking for a re-evaluation of the perimeter in which we stand, if there is any perimeter at all, as at now, with everything that has happened counted.
This is where we stand on the ground today as a people, where do we go from here?
The interview made me recall that a similar thing as happened with Wittgenstein happened with me. You see, I was reading medical science in the University and while doing my learning I kept on asking questions, questions that were at the foundations of what I was learning, the background of it, and it bothered my learning somewhat. It was a similar thing that occurred in Secondary School but this time I couldn't just evade them, it was like "if you're meant to do it, you have to". I didn't even bother to ask my teachers in the University because I knew they wouldn't have the answers and I didn't want to shame them. So, I went off on my own and taught myself it - Philosophy. As can be expected, it was in no systematic way but let me say emphatically that the first philosophers learned in no systematic way, the Platonian Academy was no systematic school, the Socratic which preceded the Platonian also wasn't (the Socratic was just a loose collection of friends who liked to argue, it is quite amusing how they related to each other, Socrates talking about "I will think on it till I have defeated it" :-)), even though there was an abundance of other systematic schools like the Sophists'. (Wittgenstein was studying Engineering when he got more interested in the foundations of the Mathematics he was studying, he was lucky that his professors who couldn't answer his questions redirected him; well, I didn't do that at all so I can't say anything negative or positive about mine :-))
Discussing this with myself, the following came to mind: some people have suggested putting Philosophy away and using it for practical purposes, Wittgenstein himself made such a suggestion. Thing is Philosophy is not something we come to meet and use, we create it. It is we as men who ask the questions and we label them as Philosophical. If we are to make it practical, we miss the point of its existence, it is already practical, serving to quell our doubts as men and to help as grow our minds. I am not against the 'practical' orientation, no, far from it, I am just switching the perspective to make the field of view wider and more truthful.
What does all this matter to our little discussion here on Science? Well, I was learning Science when my concern was more with the foundations of things, our present system doesn't allow us to switch courses, it appears that our system is an instrument of confinement, intentionally constructed to intimidate, then tame and depress the souls that live within it. It's as if it is a cyanide factory come to be built around us humans..a tear comes to my eye. What I seek to say is this: I wasn't moving away from Science, I was just going below Science to better construct its base, in another world, that would be a good thing because I am an aid to Science, I am being a link between Philosophy and Science, helping to produce that comprehensive network of knowledge that is originally the case when it is in our minds and not the disjointed one we have on the ground. There was a time when these things were more in fashion as I derive from accounts of former days where it was more a 'primitive' setting but it tells us how much we have lost.
My friend, Simple Kay, was telling me about an article where they were saying our culture is being eroded and so forth. I said at that time that it was bogus with the thought that "change is necessary" but on second thought, it is this "our culture really has slipped into the gutter, we have lost our culture of questioning which is quite tied to our spirituality". While I thought of this, my mind went to the issue of the arrival of Christianity; just how much was lost by that arrival? I am not saying, like some people, that we should jettison that noble religion, far from it, I am only asking for a re-evaluation of the perimeter in which we stand, if there is any perimeter at all, as at now, with everything that has happened counted.
This is where we stand on the ground today as a people, where do we go from here?