(or, Togas, Bibles, and Microscopes: Why Can't We All Just Get Along?)
What is philosophy? What makes it different from other types of lenses—say science or religion—that are also used by people to better understand their world?
Allow me to share a little not-so-ancient parable that might clear things up a bit.
A chicken crosses the road.
Three men are sitting in chairs spaced about thirty feet apart, facing this poultry procession. One wears a wrinkled seersucker suit and sits leisurely in a bamboo rocker; the second is wearing suspenders that hold up very high-waisted pants as he sits erect in a very practical, black metal folding chair, while the third is dressed in a simple black suit and sits perched on a very uncomfortable-looking, austere wooden stool.
The suspendered man in the folding chair is a scientist. Ever observant, he uses his empirical skills to track the feathered fowl's progress as she clucks her way forward. He's observed some very definite behavior; yes, indeed, he's witnessed the chicken locomote across the dusty road. The scientist's mind is on fire as he deconstructs how this event may have occurred; he factors in laws of physics, motion, and inertia, as well as insights from the science of physiology, in order to better understand just how the little clucker is able to make the journey.
Finally, after a long period of protracted analysis and calculation, the scientist is dripping with sweat. But his labors have borne fruit.
“Eureka!” he cries out. “I understand how the chicken has crossed the road! I know how! I know how!” he repeats excitedly.
Next to him, the seersucker-wearing man sits in his rocker, casually sipping lemonade. He's a philosopher. He's also been watching the poultry parade with great interest. As the scientist continues to shriek “I know how! I know how!” the philosopher slowly takes off his jacket to stay cool in the blistering afternoon sun and reclines in his rocker, lost in thought.
Meanwhile, the man in black—a theologian—has been sitting quietly on his rigid stool. As the scientist continues with his excited claims, the theologian reaches inside his lined breast pocket and pulls out a small, tattered black book and places it on his lap.
The chicken finally reaches the other side.
The scientist is almost beside himself now with the ecstasy of new understanding. As he cries out once again that he knows how the chicken completed his journey, the philosopher has had enough and yells out to him, “Dang fool! The question isn't how! It's not, how did the chicken cross the road? but why did the chicken cross the road? The why questions are what it's all about!” And with that, the philosopher looks over to the theologian for support. “Isn't that right, holy one? Can you tell that dang fool that he needs to be asking why not how?”
“Why yes, my philosopher friend, why is indeed the important question. But we needn't ask it. We already know why the chicken crossed the road,” the theologian confidently declares.
“Well, my holy friend, I've been sitting here all afternoon deeply contemplating just why that little feathered bird crossed this old road. And I've tried to use my reasoning abilities to get to the heart of the matter, but I haven't been able to,” the philosopher says with some frustration.
With that, the theologian smiles a knowing little smile. “Why, the answer is quite simple,” he says, as he lifts up his black book. “If we were to ask why did the chicken cross the road? I can answer that question because the answer is stated right here in this book that contains all of the wisdom in the universe.”
“All right, holy man,” the philosopher says, now getting a little impatient, “So tell me, why did the chicken cross the road?”
With that, the theologian looks deeply into the philosopher's eyes and quietly replies, “Because it's God's will.”
As soon as the still-rambling scientist hears the theologian utter the G word, he falls right off of his folding chair and starts mumbling, “God? God?! Where's the proof? I see no evidence of such a thing! There can be no God without evidence!”
That declarative statement gets the theologian fired up. As the two engage in a heated exchange, the philosopher leans back in his rocker and sips his lemonade again. Now a little half smile comes across his face as he says in a loud tone to the scientist, “No evidence? No evidence?! Dang fool, look all around you!” as he gestures towards the beauty of the landscape. “Beautiful sunsets, dazzling flowers—nature in all of its glory.”
He then pulls his chair closer to the scientist. “Do you want to know how else I know there's a God—what my other ‘evidence’ is?”
The scientist, who had grown quiet while listening to the philosopher, slowly nods his head, “Yes, what else is your proof?”
The philosopher takes a deep breath. Before he responds, he momentarily wonders whether the man of science will be able to see the obvious. Finally, he proceeds: “We exist, don't we? I mean, ‘I think, therefore I am,’ right? Well, how can we have just come into being from nothingness? What created the something—call it your Big Bang—that started the whole dance, that led to us sitting here and watching this feathered bird crossing the road and having this discussion, huh? Who—or what—started the whole ball rolling?”
The scientist grows silent for a moment, but then responds, “I still see no scientific evidence; can you devise for me an experiment that can prove that there is this thing called God?”
The philosopher just shakes his head in disgust as he answers, “I learned a long time ago, as a school boy, a very wise old saying. Let me repeat it for you: ‘Absence of evidence—scientific or otherwise— is not evidence of absence.’”
With that, the three men erupt into loud, three-way arguing. This argument continues long after the sun goes down and long after the moon is high in the sky; in fact, even today, if the evening is very quiet and very still—and if you listen very, very closely—you can still hear the three men arguing.
The parable illustrates the biggest distinctions between the three lenses of science, philosophy, and religion: science explores how, philosophy asks why, and religion confidently asserts, “We already know why; it says so right in our holy book!”
Let's take a listen to what Bertrand Russell, who's considered one of the greatest philosophers and historians of the twentieth century and who is the author of the classic A History of Western Philosophy (1945), had to say regarding the distinctions between science, philosophy, and theology:
Philosophy . . . is something intermediate between theology and science. Like theology, it consists of speculations on matters to which definite knowledge has, so far, been unascertainable; but like science, it appeals to human reason rather than to authority, whether that of tradition or that of revelation. All definite knowledge . . . belongs to science; all dogma as to what surpasses definite knowledge belongs to theology. But between theology and science is a No Man's Land, exposed to attack from both sides; this No Man's Land is philosophy.
As Russell understood it, science was the search for discovery via observation and reasoning (as opposed to dogma), while religion was an attempt to explain the hitherto unanswerable questions: Does the universe have a purpose? How did it come into existence? What happens to a person after they die?
While science can often help shed some light on those heavy-duty questions, it's inherently at a disadvantage compared to religion. That's because science, with its emphasis on the repeatability of experimental findings and its guiding principal of empirical observation oftentimes limits itself to the aspects of a phenomenon that can be operationalized into a repeatable experimental format. But the answers to the big questions don't usually fit into that neat little box; indeed, it would be rather challenging finding humanity's purpose under a microscope or proving God's existence in a lab.
Where science has excelled, however, is in deconstructing phenomena into small subsections and dissecting and analyzing those reduced bits. In other words, science has gotten very good at explaining how the different smaller parts of the engine work, but it still can't explain why the engine was built—or who built it. Science can explain how something like photosynthesis works, yet it's at a loss explaining why there's life that requires photosynthesis to begin with.
So while I'm certain that the tsetse fly's reproductive habits might be unbelievably fascinating to an entomologist, those findings can be somewhat less satisfying to those existentially interested head-scratchers asking why?
That's where philosophy comes in. Philosophy explores the answers to what Russell called the “insoluble problems”—those important, yet seemingly impossible-to-solve existential and cosmological why questions related to not only the universe, but also our role and purpose within that universe.
Where philosophy differs from religion—because, as we've discussed, religion does presume to have the why questions all figured out—is that philosophy shies away from the self-assured superstition and dogma of religion; instead, philosophy attempts to discover the answer to those eternal questions via rational inquiry and contemplative effort.
But rational inquiry and contemplative philosophical meditation in ancient Greece were also inextricably enmeshed with cultural customs and theological beliefs (in the case of the meta-physical philosophers, with notions of what were variously called God, the Unmoved Mover, the One, and/or the Good), as well as in beliefs in a metaphysical (beyond-physical) Ideal Realm or Ideal Forms.
That's a critically important concept to keep in mind: for the ancient Greeks, philosophy, science, and religion weren't separate things—at least not in the sense where they were perceived as opposing perspectives. Instead, philosophy, science, and religion were all integrated, complementary lenses that people had used to better understand and experience their world. Now, that's not to reductively say that philosophy, science, and religion were all the same thing, because there were important distinctions to be made between those various complementary lenses, but they weren't viewed as opposing ideologies, as they are today.
What that means for our chicken-crossing-the-road parable is that the ancient Greeks would have used all of those tools to better understand the chicken quest; they would have used science to understand the mechanics of the chicken's journey, they would have used philosophy to try and determine the purpose behind the road crossing, and, finally, they would have consulted with oracles or mystic sages to intuit the divine dimension of the chicken's traverse.
In addition to this integral approach, there's also one other very important distinction between ancient Greek philosophy and modern conceptions of philosophy.
When a historian like Bertrand Russell discusses and defines philosophy he's really explicating what classical scholar and author Algis Uzdavinys calls philosophical discourse. That's very different from the Greek notion of philosophy being a lived practice instead of just an intellectual discussion. As Uzdavinys distinguishes in his important book The Golden Chain: An Anthology of Pythagorean and Platonic Philosophy (2004), discourse is analogous to theory (the Greek Theoria) and correlates more to later Occidental (European) notions of philosophy, while the essence of ancient Pythagorean and Platonic philosophy was Praxis (from the Greek root “to do”) and meant the actual, lived application of philosophy— not just talk of philosophy.
In other words—and I'm sorry to use this cliché, but it needs to be said—the ancient Greeks walked the walk and didn't just talk the talk of philosophy; for them, philosophy was their way of life. I challenge you to find a philosophy professor today who can say the same thing.
But why is living a life informed by philosophy important? How can that be helpful to a person? And why do we, as humans, seem to need to better understand things, whether through religious practice, philosophical exploration, or the lens of science? Why is that we seem to need to know?