PHILOSOPHY- A VALID SCIENCE

Man lives in accordance to their philosophy of life; their conception of the world. This is true even of the most thoughtless. It is impossible to live without metaphysics. The choice that is given us is not between some kind of metaphysics and no metaphysics; it is always between good metaphysics and bad metaphysics.

                 ------------ Anonymous (An eminent English writer on philosophy)

What is Philosophy?

Philosophy in its widest etymological sense means “love of knowledge”. It tries to know things that immediately and remotely concern man.

What is the real nature of man?

What is the real nature of this world in which he lives?

Is there any creator of this world?

These are some of the many problems, taken at random, which we agitating human mind in every land from the very dawn of civilization.

Therefore we can say; philosophy deals with the problems of this nature.

As philosophy aims at the knowledge of truth, thus, it is termed in Indian literature as “Darshana” or “Vision of truth”.

Philosophy – The mother of science

In the history of European philosophy; as the human knowledge about the different problems of nature (mentioned above) began to grow; it became impossible for the same man to study everything about each problem. Hence, the division of labor or, specialization became necessary; and a group of men devoted themselves to figure out a particular type of problem or, a few connected problems. 

Plato & Aristotle

                The divided branches (or, specialization) are nothing but different sciences that we know today as physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, astronomy, geology etc. Similarly, science like anatomy, physiology and other forms of medical sciences devoted themselves to study about human body along with the problems associated with it and science like psychology began to study the problems related to human mind.

Thus; philosophy (from which all other types of science originated) became a subject-matter of these special sciences and became dependent upon the reports of investigations made by them and began to understand their meanings and implications critically; and utilized their results for understanding the nature of the universe ,i.e., the nature of man and the nature of God.

The present day western philosophy

European philosophy at the present day has five main branches and these are –

• 1       Metaphysics
• 2       Epistemology
• 3       Logic
• 4       Ethics
• 5       Aesthetics
• 6       Axiology

      

Metaphysics discuss the general problem regarding reality, i.e., man, nature & knowledge.

Epistemology is also known as “theory of knowledge”; which inquire into human knowledge as how it is developed and how far it is able to grasp the reality.

Logic discusses the laws of valid reasoning and other identical problems.

Ethics investigates the problems of morality, such as the standard of moral judgment, the highest goal of human life and other cognate problems.

Aesthetics deals with the problems of beauty.

Axiology is a recently developed branch of philosophy which is devoted to the discussion of the problem of values.

Sociology is sometimes also regarded as the branch of philosophy and discussed along with ethics. Similarly, Psychology has been so long a very important branch of philosophy but, the tendency now is to treat it as one of the special sciences like physics, chemistry etc. and give it a place of independent philosophy.

The beauty of Indian philosophy

Though the basic problems of philosophy have been the same in the east as in the west and the chief solutions have striking similarities , yet the method of philosophical inquiry differ in certain respects and the process of development of philosophical thought also vary.

Though Indian philosophy discusses the different problems of metaphysics, ethics, epistemology, logic and psychology etc. but, it doesn’t discuss them separately. Every problem is discussed by Indian philosopher from all possible approaches like metaphysical, ethical etc.

Ancient Indian Philosophers

Indian philosophy also called as “Hindu philosophy” but, the word “Hindu” represents “India” and not the religion. Indian philosophy consists of various speculations of many eminent philosophers of India including ancient and modern, atheist and theist, etc.

Schools of Indian Philosophy

The different schools of Indian philosophy are broadly divided in 2 categories, i.e,

• 1   Orthodox system (Astika)
• 2   Heterodox System (Nastika)

The philosophies which believe in the Vedas (Sacred ancient scripture) and its declaration are called as “Orthodox” and those who don’t are called as “Heterodox”

Under the orthodox system we have five different schools like-

1. Samkhya school
2. Yoga school
3. Nyaya school
4. Vaisesika school
5. Purva mimansa (Mimansa) school
6. Uttara mimansa (Vedanta) school

Similarly, under the heterodox system we have three different schools like-

1. Charvaka school

2. Buddhism

3. Jainism

How Indian Philosophy Is Going To Help Us?

Each of the schools of Indian philosophy has their own approach of understanding and fit with logic. But, we are not going to study all the philosophy as our main aim is to find out the answers of questions that are still unknown to science in a purely logical way.

There are various such questions like –

Does God exist? If yes; then where? How can I see him?

Who am I?

What happens after death?

Is there anything like heaven or, hell? And many more

The answers for all such questions are explained with a very strong logic in the “Vedanta philosophy”. But while discussing such answers we will also look at various other philosophies for a lucid explanation.

Note-:

One thing we need to understand first, i.e, the notion that “everything can be explained by the help of science and mathematical formula” is absolutely wrong.

For example – One cannot measure the beauty of poem by means of any experiment and there is no such scale to do so. Similarly, there is no scale to measure “how hungry a person is?” All such things need a different approach of understanding.

So, just because they can’t be explained by scientific standpoint we cannot tell that the poems written by William Shakespeare are meaningless.

Similarly; Philosophy deals with reasoning and logic and at each argument one has to ask himself and think about the point intuitively and thus realize the result.

So, Philosophy is a valid science and studied by many scholars in colleges and universities. In fact, the abbreviation of “PhD” means “Doctor of philosophy”. So, philosophy is everywhere and attached with every single person and hence can’t be neglected.


Read more - Decoding religion

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