Terms and definitions

Every technical documentation has a chapter for terms, acronyms and definitions. This blog is no exception. Yes I know this is not a technical document, not a whitepaper nor a blueprint, but I am an engineer. That means I want to make things clear and organized. So here we go:

Philosophy:

You might have heard phrases like "art of thinking" or something like that. Forget about all that nonsense, as it does not really mean anything. In fact classic philosophy is nothing but a super-science that actually contains schools for mathematics, physics, logic, chemistry, politics, metaphysics, social studies, and the list goes on and on. As you can see all natural sciences are automatically covered here, so for instance quantum physics and cosmology are part of philosophy, by this definition.

Merchants and salesmen: not philosophists. it is true that it is no other than Arabic merchants that took the modern number zero in use, from pure business need. But zero was actually invented before that, and what merchants innovated was actually a symbol for it, which made it easy to write and communicate. Practical people those merchants indeed, but we are going to leave them out from the philosophists category.

Clergy: not counted in as philosophists. Some priests might of course practice philosophy, like monk Roger Bacon, when he wanted to find out what light and rainbow were actually made of. His colleagues did not approve his hobby, and improsoned him for practicing black magic. For this reason priests not considered as philosophists, and teology not considered as philosophy. However, the study of religions (through psychology, history, anthropology, sociology etc.) is philosophy.

Medicine: Doctors have isolated themselves in their own discussion forums for a long, long time ago. Even if medicine has tight links to chemistry, doctors have subcontracted that competence from scientists. Even today, you are going to a very different school to study chemistry whether you want to put the chemical into a human body, or somewhere else. Therefore doctors are not considered as philosophists and practicing medicine not philosophy.

Engineer:

An engineer is a person who has evolved from a locomotive operator. He has a passion for all moving mechanical gadgets that have flashing lights and preferably make some kind of noise. Like trains do. As a young person he used to break up every toy he had just to find out what kind of parts it is made of, how it works and to find out whether he could put it backtogether. When an engineer grows up, he will enjoy nothing more than creating new gadgets of the above described kind.

This person owes everything to the philosophists, because without them, he would not have the foundation for making new gadgets. This is often forgotten from the engineers, who think philosophists are not creating things, they are just discussing things and writing a book or two on occasion.

Philosophists owe much to the engineers. Engineers have given philosophists tools to push further and further to the limits of understanding the world. This is often forgotten by the scientists and philosophists, who think engineers work short-sighted and focus on profit rather than common good. A computer is a good example. It was innovated by a philosophist, and productized by an engineer. Few philosophist would refuse to work without one nowadays.