Philosophy
is a way of developing new ideas. There are perennial questions
philosophers and others have asked and continue to ask such as what
the meaning of life is. Some of those questions have been answered
and some may never be answered. Philosophy is a way of developing
questions and answers for challenges that may not already exist.
Often the data is abstract yet one may also consider purely empirical
issues.
An
example could be in fisheries management. One of America’s largest
rivers, the Stikine of S.E. Alaska, had so few king salmon returning
this year (in 2018) (to spawn) that all fishing was closed. The
pitifully low number of 740 fish to repopulate a river that formerly
had hundreds of thousands or millions could not be reached.
Fishermen, politicians and others can’t manage the fishery well at
all. A philosopher might suggest practical ways to restore the
fishery such as working with Russia and Canada to halt all fishing
for king salmon across the North pacific, Alaska, Canada and Siberia
for seven years to let the fishery recover and limiting the annual
harvest after restoration. Though it is a realistic plan politically
it is unfeasible. A philosopher might further inquire into the
reasons why.
Philosophers
may classify all knowledge into fields that seem appropriate places
to file the data. The history of ideas has many divisions.
Philosophical inquiries perhaps occupy just a fraction of those.
Ways
of thinking about ideas and the objects that are represented in ideas
about objects are a basis for reviewing the nature of ideas human
beings have about objects, occupational activities and knowledge
built up in technical work. Over time technical work can build up
quite a lot of material. Non-philosophical writers may express the
knowledge of technical fields in books or tracts.
Technical writings
describing occupations and scientific data and methods can be
voluminous. Fields such as metallurgy and auto mechanics sit beside
astronomy and ocean diving, botany and anatomy. In times past
philosophers among other examined many of those technical works and
brought concepts from them together to form synthetic and new
interdisciplinary ideas.
That brings me to the
essence of this essay on what philosophy is. That is it is more than
simple technical writings in the field of philosophy known mostly to
historians of philosophy and some academic philosophers pursuing
those technical fields such as ethics and logic. Philosophy is also
an activity that examines data from several disciplines to construct
new ideas. It is a process quite like one method of making
inventions. The inventor researches and studies up a lot of
scientific and technical material and lets his mind and subconscious
combine the ideas to form something new. A philosopher can research
several academic disciplines such as theology, philosophy and
cosmology and write about ideas that are newly combined at least for
the philosopher and comprise a synthetic, non-methodical approach to
writing an essay or developing a different perspective with a unique
or nearly unique point of view.
In
the United States occupational speculation does not permit much time
for interdisciplinary research. Even academic people tend to need to
remain within their field of specialization. An historian for
instance would need to find an elaborate explanation for why he or
she spent most of their time studying insects instead of Western
Civilization if that was their area of educational responsibility.
Philosophers shouldn’t have any problem like that.
In
fact philosophers might consider the role of insects on various
stages of western civilization or the way music corrupted it, if it
did, when it became fashionable among aristocrats. Philosophers might
combine history with anthropology and sociology to ask if Aristotle’s
politics was anything besides meaningless speculation of no interest
to ordinary people or even royals for nearly 2000 years after he
wrote about the cycles from democracy to tyranny.
Philosophy can be
simply the construction of interdisciplinary essays about virtually
anything drawing from material that already exists within field
specialization to construct or invent something new. In doing so they
may find more things true.
