Durant: Science gives us knowledge, and philosophy gives us wisdom

There is a pleasure in philosophy, and even the metaphysical apparitions are so fascinating that every scholar can appreciate it.

Although desire can pull us from the heaven of thought back to the worldly life of fame and profit. But as many people know, there was a golden age in human history called the "Summer of Life," when philosophy was, as Plato put it, "a noble pleasure." People's love of truth seems to outweigh the pursuit of carnal desires and money.

This incomparable admiration of wisdom by the ancients remains in our thirsty souls to this day. Most of our lives are spent in boredom and hesitation. We struggle loosely with the chaos of our hearts and surroundings, and we always have the belief that as long as we can dissect our souls, we will find that there are spiritual pursuits in us that support our lives.

We should know that "for us, life means constantly turning our personality or experience into a raging fire.". We are like the Mithia in The Brothers Karamazov who doesn't seek glory and wealth, but only wants to find answers to her own questions. We need to grasp the meaning of life as a whole in order to get ourselves out of the vortex of daily life. We need to recognize the truth of life in our lifetime, to see things that seem eternal from an "eternal point of view", and we must learn to face fate with a smile. Even in the face of death calmly; we must be whole people, reconciling our desires, cooperating with each other, and reaching a common norm.

For cooperation between people is the ultimate goal of both ethics and political science, and possibly of logic and metaphysics. Thoreau said that to be a philosopher is not to have deep thoughts or to create a school, but to love wisdom and be guided by it to live a simple, independent, open-minded, and confident life. Truth may not enrich us, but it does set us free.

Some readers may unceremoniously interrupt us by saying that philosophy is obscure and almost ignorant, as impractical as chess. Cicero said, "There is nothing more absurd than what is seen in the writings of philosophers." On our voyage, let us avoid the metaphysical whirlpool, the noisy ocean of theological controversy, and anchor only in the harbor of light. Science seems to be moving forward, while philosophy seems to be losing ground. But this is only because the problems that philosophy seeks to solve are problems that the scientific method cannot yet prove, such as good and evil, beauty and ugliness, life and death, order and freedom, which is a very difficult task.

Once a field of study has produced knowledge that can be expressed in precise formulas, it enters the ranks of science. Every science begins with philosophy and ends with art. It stems from assumptions and finally bears fruit. Philosophy is a hypothetical interpretation of the unknown (as in metaphysics) or things that cannot be known exactly (as in ethics or political philosophy), it is the vanguard of the pursuit of truth, science is the land it occupies, and behind it is the stable region. Knowledge and art have created our imperfect but wonderful world there. Philosophy seems to have fallen into a trance, because she always leaves the fruits of victory to her daughter, science, but she is never satisfied to explore the unknown.

Can we make our academic atmosphere a little stronger? Science is analytical explanation, while philosophy is synthetic explanation; science always breaks down organisms into organs, and transforms obscurity into clarity. It does not care about the value of things, the possibilities of ideals, nor their ultimate meaning, but is satisfied with explaining their status quo and function, focusing only on the nature and process of motion of things themselves. Scientists treat things the same way as nature in Turgenev's poems—with the same interest in the legs of a flea as in the pain of a genius's creation. But the philosopher is not satisfied with describing facts, he wants to understand the universal relationship between facts and experience, so as to grasp its meaning and value. He grasps the connections between things and makes comprehensive explanations. He tried to reassemble the universe that had been dismantled like a clock by curious scientists, and it was better than ever.

Science teaches us how to save people and kill people, and it reduces mortality little by little, but it kills us in large numbers in war. Only wisdom, which has been coordinated according to all experience, can tell us when to save and when to kill. Science observes the process of motion and envisions a solution: philosophy evaluates and coordinates purposes. It is precisely because our current methods and tools are constantly increasing, far exceeding our explanations of ideals and purposes, that our lives will be noisy and meaningless. For facts are worthless if they are not connected with desires, and facts alone are not enough unless they are related to purpose and wholeness. Science without philosophy, facts without values and prospects for the future, cannot save us from disaster and despair.

Science gives us knowledge, while philosophy gives us wisdom. Specifically, philosophy encompasses five fields of study, namely logic, aesthetics, ethics, political science, and metaphysics. Logic studies thinking and rational ways of thinking: observation and thinking, deduction and induction, hypothesis and experimentation, analysis and synthesis are all forms of human activity that logic seeks to understand. For most people, this is a boring science, but the major events in the history of ideas are all based on the improvements that people have made in their own thinking and research methods. The object of study of aesthetics is the ideal form and beauty, it is about the philosophy of art. Ethics is the study of ideal behavior and supreme knowledge. According to Socrates, it is the wisdom of life and the knowledge of good and evil. Political science explores the ideal social system (not a scheming technique, as some people think). Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, socialism, anarchism, feminism, these are the roles on the stage of political philosophy. Finally, there is metaphysics, which examines the "ultimate existence" of all things, the fundamental properties of "matter" (i.e., ontology), "consciousness" (philosophical psychology), and the interrelationship between "spirit" and "matter" in the process of perception and thinking (i.e., epistemology).

These are the components of philosophy. But once philosophy is dismembered, it loses its beauty and pleasure completely. Therefore, we do not intend to grasp the ideas of the sages in the dry abstractions and dogmas, but in the vivid life stories of the geniuses.

We have to study not only philosophy, but also philosophers. We are to spend our lives with these thinkers and martyrs, bathed in the light of their spirits, until we too can appreciate what Leonardo called "the noble pleasure and the joy of understanding." If we study properly, we will find that every philosopher has his own uniqueness. "Do you know the trick to learning?" Emerson asked, "Everyone has something worth learning from me, so I'm a schoolboy in front of them." "Treating giants in the history of ideas with this attitude certainly does not damage our self-esteem!" In addition, we will be pleased by another of Emerson's words: "When we listen to the words of genius, we recall the ideas that we had vaguely like geniuses in our youth, but we did not have the eloquence or courage to express them at that time." Indeed, only we have the ears and the soul to listen to them. Only if we also have the root system that blossoms in them, the giants can speak to us. We have had their experiences, but we have not been able to draw the truth from them, because we are not keenly aware of the various overtones that sound in the real environment, and the genius hears these overtones and the music from heaven. Genius understands why Pedaggras says philosophy is the highest music.

So let us listen to their voices, forgive their occasional fallacies, and accept their earnest teachings with enthusiasm. "We also have to learn to understand and tolerate." Socrates the Elder said, "Don't think about whether the philosophy teachers are good or bad, think about philosophy itself." Examine it carefully, and if it is evil by nature, keep all people away from it; but if it does not live up to our trust, follow it, preserve it, and enjoy the joy it brings. ”