This is a very interesting question, because it comes in various forms. Most people would believe that science is useful, but what they would question Philosophy? Within the academia, Mathematics would be ridiculed. This reinforces the fact that knowledge is useful within a context, else it just provides you dots which you could connect in the future. Research is done for the future, navigating through time-frames would help us in seeing utility of studies of all forms- Philosophy, Metaphysics, Epistemology, Science, Sociology and Mathematics.
We do believe that the observation that a wheel amplifies your sweat; has made our lives easier. Examples like the wheel have been evangelizing science. But, we have risen past empirical observations and primitive innovations. We make phone-calls which are facilitated by fancy fourier transforms. At the end of the day, fourier transforms could be seen as magic. At least that's how we do, to avoid the math! A black-box, if not magic. The beauty of technology lies in the understanding of the underlying theory which enables revolutions.
However, there could be alternate ways of looking at those observations. The phone manufacturer has used certain combination of wires and hardware, so did the mobile tower operator. These were some random combinations in which elements of nature were put in, to facilitate a voice to reach some other predefined place. This randomness can be replicated owing to the understanding of patterns, perhaps due to the sophistication in mathematics and engineering. All of technology is just a manipulation of the configurations of nature, to achieve certain goals like the Atom Bomb, nuclear weapons and of course vaccinations, food-productivity etc.
There are some interesting questions to be asked here. Firstly, why would we want this sophistication? And, what do you mean by alternate ways of theorizing? Can we get hold of some examples. Note that all the studies I presented as examples are important in this context. Sociology helps understand public perception of science and the method of science. Epistemology can handle questions like how to educate kids about mobile technologies. Metaphysics and Philosophy answer the two important questions posed in this paragraph.
There are layers of innovations embedded in every crazy technology we use. Lets look at it through this simple analogy. Ramu is good at fixing tyres while Shyam fixes punctures. An immediate conclusion is that, in the mechanic shed, Ramu can give the tyres to Shyam who would fix the punctures. This helps in handling more more vehicles. Now look at pairs of such people, say Raju and Shiva, basically one fixer and one 'puncturer', this provides an efficient mechanic shed which can handle lots of customers. Now, Ramu can give the tyre to either Shyam or Shiva. This sophistication improves efficiency and it was experience which helped us design these systems.
We might call this production and we might attribute it to Henry Ford. However, The same idea applies everywhere, nature is complex, atleast it seems to be. Understanding the system and engineering it to our benefit, seems to involve sophistication, at least as far as modern technology is concerned, we have awesome magical simple solutions later. This is essentially the goal of companies like Apple which aim at making technologies simple, but early innovators will have to handle the hassles of sophistication and complexity.
To answer the second question, let me take an analogy again. Suppose uncle Tom wears has only two shirts-black and blue. For some weird reason, we need to determine the color of the shirt he would wear today. This may not be a purely random event and we may try to construct patterns through experience. The experience could be observation set of his dressing trends and general dressing trends. Say we know that the blue is a formal and the black is a casual. Then, one way of theorizing is that people usually wear casuals on Sundays and hence uncle might do the same. Another way of theorizing is that uncle wears blue to office and he since is going today, that's what he would be wearing.
In this example, both the theories might be sharing a lot of common ground. However that may not be the case always. We look at patterns in the existing set of observations and try to extrapolate it, to determine the future. We have been observing the sun since ages and we have determined that he rises in the East, as his motions seems to be periodic. There could be multiple ways of looking at the patterns and when there is a conflict, usually one of them dies out or it may survive under exceptions. This is essential a sociological problem and the Philosophy of when to accept a theory is an interesting question.
What is the purpose of life? We don't seem to have an answer. but, at least we seem to understand that we are a slave to our hormones or may be to our conscious and subconscious mind. This assumption implies that we tend to be interested in seeing certain processes which happen around us. We would want to influence and change life. This discussion should have poked several questions, which would arise while trying to bring out the change. Philosophy concerns itself with all questions of knowledge and helps us understand and bring out better systems to influence the target systems.
There could be many awesome answers as to why Philosophy is a useful exercise. However, I would like to keep my proposal simple. Philosophy comes in everywhere, one very easily recognizable application is- how to we fit this data and extrapolate?
A general observation is that people who emerge in any sphere of human excellence tend to talk Philosophy, at least unconscious of the fact that they are talking what can be called Philosophy(of their field). They are essentially seeing patterns and trying to use these metaphysical observations to carry out optimizations which help them in their field, which got them the fame. This is how Philosophical excursions are useful. Another blog-post would explain how experience of thought-systems helps you theorize better and make better decisions. Goodbye for now, you could get started with some questions!
We do believe that the observation that a wheel amplifies your sweat; has made our lives easier. Examples like the wheel have been evangelizing science. But, we have risen past empirical observations and primitive innovations. We make phone-calls which are facilitated by fancy fourier transforms. At the end of the day, fourier transforms could be seen as magic. At least that's how we do, to avoid the math! A black-box, if not magic. The beauty of technology lies in the understanding of the underlying theory which enables revolutions.
However, there could be alternate ways of looking at those observations. The phone manufacturer has used certain combination of wires and hardware, so did the mobile tower operator. These were some random combinations in which elements of nature were put in, to facilitate a voice to reach some other predefined place. This randomness can be replicated owing to the understanding of patterns, perhaps due to the sophistication in mathematics and engineering. All of technology is just a manipulation of the configurations of nature, to achieve certain goals like the Atom Bomb, nuclear weapons and of course vaccinations, food-productivity etc.
There are some interesting questions to be asked here. Firstly, why would we want this sophistication? And, what do you mean by alternate ways of theorizing? Can we get hold of some examples. Note that all the studies I presented as examples are important in this context. Sociology helps understand public perception of science and the method of science. Epistemology can handle questions like how to educate kids about mobile technologies. Metaphysics and Philosophy answer the two important questions posed in this paragraph.
There are layers of innovations embedded in every crazy technology we use. Lets look at it through this simple analogy. Ramu is good at fixing tyres while Shyam fixes punctures. An immediate conclusion is that, in the mechanic shed, Ramu can give the tyres to Shyam who would fix the punctures. This helps in handling more more vehicles. Now look at pairs of such people, say Raju and Shiva, basically one fixer and one 'puncturer', this provides an efficient mechanic shed which can handle lots of customers. Now, Ramu can give the tyre to either Shyam or Shiva. This sophistication improves efficiency and it was experience which helped us design these systems.
We might call this production and we might attribute it to Henry Ford. However, The same idea applies everywhere, nature is complex, atleast it seems to be. Understanding the system and engineering it to our benefit, seems to involve sophistication, at least as far as modern technology is concerned, we have awesome magical simple solutions later. This is essentially the goal of companies like Apple which aim at making technologies simple, but early innovators will have to handle the hassles of sophistication and complexity.
To answer the second question, let me take an analogy again. Suppose uncle Tom wears has only two shirts-black and blue. For some weird reason, we need to determine the color of the shirt he would wear today. This may not be a purely random event and we may try to construct patterns through experience. The experience could be observation set of his dressing trends and general dressing trends. Say we know that the blue is a formal and the black is a casual. Then, one way of theorizing is that people usually wear casuals on Sundays and hence uncle might do the same. Another way of theorizing is that uncle wears blue to office and he since is going today, that's what he would be wearing.
In this example, both the theories might be sharing a lot of common ground. However that may not be the case always. We look at patterns in the existing set of observations and try to extrapolate it, to determine the future. We have been observing the sun since ages and we have determined that he rises in the East, as his motions seems to be periodic. There could be multiple ways of looking at the patterns and when there is a conflict, usually one of them dies out or it may survive under exceptions. This is essential a sociological problem and the Philosophy of when to accept a theory is an interesting question.
What is the purpose of life? We don't seem to have an answer. but, at least we seem to understand that we are a slave to our hormones or may be to our conscious and subconscious mind. This assumption implies that we tend to be interested in seeing certain processes which happen around us. We would want to influence and change life. This discussion should have poked several questions, which would arise while trying to bring out the change. Philosophy concerns itself with all questions of knowledge and helps us understand and bring out better systems to influence the target systems.
There could be many awesome answers as to why Philosophy is a useful exercise. However, I would like to keep my proposal simple. Philosophy comes in everywhere, one very easily recognizable application is- how to we fit this data and extrapolate?
A general observation is that people who emerge in any sphere of human excellence tend to talk Philosophy, at least unconscious of the fact that they are talking what can be called Philosophy(of their field). They are essentially seeing patterns and trying to use these metaphysical observations to carry out optimizations which help them in their field, which got them the fame. This is how Philosophical excursions are useful. Another blog-post would explain how experience of thought-systems helps you theorize better and make better decisions. Goodbye for now, you could get started with some questions!
