PHILOSOPHY

Occasionally I call myself a philosopher (actually, a street philosopher), but I always do so with reservations. I really don't like to be categorized. It somehow takes away from the dynamic of life to place yourself in a particular (and usually static) niche.

I make an exception for philosophy.

I do so because philosophy is about as broad as it gets. You're not really taking away from the ever-ongoing dynamic that is Life by aligning yourself with the title of Philosopher. You see, I happen to believe that everyone is a philosopher. They just don't know it.

Have you noticed how many people will say from time to time something like, "My philosophy is...."? Everybody has a philosophy, whether they think so or not. It is, after all, little more than an opinion. When you think about it, opininons are about all that we have. All religions are based on opinions. As a matter of fact, even science is based on it. How's that, you ask?

It's actually very simple. Science is a method, or approach, to the world, a way of understanding it. A scientist will tell us that the method was discovered through trial and error. Those who practice science believe in it uneqivocally, as do those who practice a religious belief. The scientists, however, are able to perform experiments -repeatedly - thereby demonstrating that such and such a thing or idea is true.

But there are limits even to science. Even though there are sciences for a lot of different areas, like physics and chemistry for example, it just so happens that there is no science of science. Science is a method that we happen to believe in. We believe, i.e., it is our opinion, that if we measure and weigh properly, if we cut the material world up into little bitty pieces, we'll eventually discover what's its all about. And when we discover what it's all about, we'll be able to control it, which will enhance our own power. Yes, scientists are on a power trip. Can you imagine more power than that which is contained in an atomic bomb?

I don't object to the scientific method. It seems indeed to have greatly empowered us. We have more and more machines all the time, machines which are doing more and more work for us. We're even hard at work on machines that will actually think for us. I can't help but wonder what's going to happen when we succeed with that project. Think about it. We don't have to expend too much energy getting about (in some ways the very essence of Life) because science has helped us develop machines which do the moving for us. We just sit in them while they do all the work required to carry us around. We don't have to go to too much trouble to prepare our food or wash our clothes because of machines. We even have them to brush our teeth! All we have to do is hold the obect while it does the work. As a result of this, we are beginning to learn that it's good to expend some energy to move around and prepare our food and wash our clothes. Our legs are made - hello! - for walking and our hands are made for grasping more than just the steering wheel of a car. It's healthy to grasp a knife and cut up an onion or peel a potato, or squeeze a sponge against a dirty plate. It's healthy.

Science's inability to foresee such things is only one of its shortcomings. I wholeheartedly support the philosophy of the physical sciences, chemistry, physics, astronomy, and so on. But the sciences which study Life, I'm not so sure about. It's the primary reason, you see, why I don't trust modern medicine, except for medical crises. I don't care for modern medicine, in other words, because I don't subscribe to its philosophy, and whether doctors like to admit it or not, medicine is based on a philosophy, a mere opinion. It is the philosophy that Life itself, just like non-living things, can be cut into little pieces to discover what makes it work. I don't believe this.

Reductionism (the philosophy that science is based on) can only go so far. Life is not based on DNA. On the contrary, DNA is a product of Life, something that Life, at a much deeper level than we are able to penetrate, is doing. DNA is not causing Life to manifest itself. Life is causing DNA to appear.

Alan Watts probably said it better than anybody (as he so often did): Life grows from the inside out. You can't take living things apart and put them back together again as you can do with machines. This simple wisdom even appears in the famous nursery rhyme: All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again. Can you even imagine putting an egg back together once it's broken?

Yes, I'm a philosopher, which means most likely nothing, except that I have a lot of opinions on a lot of stuff. But doesn't everybody?