Philosophy:

The dictionary definition of Philosophy is the “Study or Science of the Truths and principles underlying all knowledge and being.” For the ancient Greeks (Considered the famous of western philosophy), the world denoted “Philos (Love) and “Sophia” (Wisdom) literally meaning, “Love for Wisdom”.

Hindu Philosophy

In India Philosophy is called “Darshanam” which roughly means the special insight into the truths of life. Note the word Truths. Nothing to do with fantasy or more utopianism. That is also the sublime basis of all sciences.

In the west, the bifurcation of science and philosophy took place during the Renaissance, the “Great awakening.” People rooting for free thinking wanted all knowledge to be redeemed from the authority of the church on the one hand and from Aristotelian logic on the other. They wanted to observe and learn, and thus brought their search into the shape of sciences like Physics, Chemistry, Alchemy, Astronomy, Mathematics, Mechanics, and Medicine.

Rene Descartes of France (The father of Modern Philosophy) introduced the mathematical method into philosophy for the first time, stripped its Godly pretensions, and limited God to just bridging the gap between two primary substances which he called matter and mind. These two were autonomous entities, according to him, and functioned mechanically with their own inherent laws.

Francis Bacon Philosopher of England threw out age-old concepts of deductive reasoning in Aristotelian methods. He substitutes them with his own brand of logic, called the “Inductive” or Scientific method. He established a strong foundation for empirical philosophy also.

Later, empirical philosophers like Locke, Berkley and Hume denounced metaphysics and brought in newer trends of phenomenalism, Skepticism and critical Realism.

The age-old division of philosophy into metaphysics, epistemology, and Axiology met its own end when empirical philosophers reduced it to a mere analysis of language. Metaphysics and its divisions Cosmology and ontology were declared impossible, if it were a search for reality beyond the empirical world. Epistemology in now redundant and Axiology is considered subjective.

Question bothers natural scientists and bugs philosophers. Those in the physical sciences almost look down upon philosophy, dismissing it as an abstract, utopian and idealistic, with no basis in the claptrap of reality.

But, what is in reality? Is philosophy Fantasy? Is it more of an art, like poetry, or can it ever come to be hard science, like Geometry, or is it halfway between the two?

In effect, philosophy has gone through all these stages. The Riguvedic poet is a philosopher expressing his emotions, towards the various forces of nature, which controls his life, while early Greek philosophers eulogized the world in a poetic and scientific spirit. According to philosophers though, it is the “Queen of Sciences” in the sense that before any of the empirical sciences were borne, philosophy was rich and alive and led in fact to the birth of psychology, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry etc.

Although less authoritative traditional texts, the great Sanskrit epic poems are probably the most influential pieces of literature in the whole Indian tradition. The Mahabharata tells of the Great War between two royal families, the Pandavas and the Kauravas ending in their mutual destruction. The enormously influential Bhagavad-Gita is a section of this epic. The Ramayana relates the legend of Prince Rama, usurped from his throne and exiled, his beautiful wife Sita kidnapped by the demon Ravana, his calm self-control and noble generosity provides an example of admirable conduct. They both probably originate in oral traditions of the middle of the first millennium B.C.E. and were written down between that time and the 4th century C.E.