Humanities Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! ===Philosophy=== {{Main|Philosophy}} [[File:Kierkegaard.jpg|thumb|The works of [[Søren Kierkegaard]] overlap into many fields of the humanities, such as philosophy, literature, theology, music, and classical studies.]] Philosophy—etymologically, the "love of wisdom"—is generally the study of problems concerning matters such as existence, knowledge, justification, truth, justice, right and wrong, beauty, validity, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing these issues by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on reasoned argument, rather than experiments ([[experimental philosophy]] being an exception).<ref name=":3">Thomas Nagel (1987). ''What Does It All Mean? A Very Short Introduction to Philosophy''. Oxford University Press, pp. 4–5.</ref> Philosophy used to be a very comprehensive term, including what have subsequently become separate disciplines, such as [[physics]]. (As [[Immanuel Kant]] noted, "Ancient Greek philosophy was divided into three sciences: physics, ethics, and logic.")<ref name=":4">Kant, Immanuel (1785). ''Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals'', the first line.</ref> Today, the main fields of philosophy are [[logic]], [[ethics]], [[metaphysics]], and [[epistemology]]. Still, it continues to overlap with other disciplines. The field of [[semantics]], for example, brings philosophy into contact with [[linguistics]]. Since the early twentieth century, philosophy in English-speaking [[universities]] has moved away from the humanities and closer to the [[Outline of formal science|formal sciences]], becoming much more ''analytic.'' [[Analytic philosophy]] is marked by emphasis on the use of logic and formal methods of reasoning, conceptual analysis, and the use of [[symbolic logic|symbolic]] and/or [[mathematical logic]], as contrasted with the [[Continental philosophy|Continental style of philosophy]].<ref>See, e.g., Brian Leiter [https://web.archive.org/web/20061115002425/http://www.philosophicalgourmet.com/analytic.asp] "'Analytic' philosophy today names a style of doing philosophy, not a philosophical program or a set of substantive views. Analytic philosophers, crudely speaking, aim for argumentative clarity and precision; draw freely on the tools of logic; and often identify, professionally and intellectually, more closely with the sciences and mathematics than with the humanities."</ref> This method of inquiry is largely indebted to the work of philosophers such as [[Gottlob Frege]], [[Bertrand Russell]], [[G.E. Moore]] and [[Ludwig Wittgenstein]]. Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly, then do not submit it here. You are also promising us that you wrote this yourself, or copied it from a public domain or similar free resource (see Christianpedia:Copyrights for details). Do not submit copyrighted work without permission! Cancel Editing help (opens in new window) Discuss this page