Philosophy  

In General
* Idea: Concerns itself with the fundamental questions of life, arising out of natural curiosity and wonder; Philosophy is not getting used to the world, and being astonished by it like children.
* Basic questions: How was the world created? Is there any will or meaning behind what happens? Is there life after death? How can we answer those questions? How ought we to live?
* History: Philosophy (as opposed to myths and religion) seems to have started around 600 BC in Greece.
* The "mind-body problem": The study of the relation between the mental and the physical; There is a Whiteheadian philosophy for which mind and body are not to be treated as separate; Within physics, ideas along these lines have been proposed by Shimony, but have not been formalized into a physical theory.
* Remark: Some questions cannot be answered by talking or thinking about them.
@ The mind-body problem: Kim 96 [survey]; Horgan BJPS(96) [rev]; Georgiev PBMB(20)-a2012 [quantum information theory approach]; > s.a. Wikipedia page.

Schools
* Natural philosophers: Find underlying substance and laws of nature, by thinking about nature.
* Main lines of thought: Rationalism, materialism.

Issues, Questions > see Ontology.

Philosophy of Science > see philosophy of physics; philosophy of science.

Online Resources > see Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy; Internet Encyclopedia of Science pages.


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