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Comment by Thursday24 | Hacker News Reader

> I believe it is a bit pretentious. The word philosophy lends extra weight to what is otherwise random speculations. Many philosophers in fact claim that science is a just sub field of philosophy and that philosophy is “above” it.

It can be above, below, side-by-side, wherever. Or nowhere. Or maybe impossible to say. Whatever the relation is, where is the possibility of pretension here? Philosophers make claims, scientists make claims too. But that is the characteristic of the practitioners, not the field of study.

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Effort. You can create a field called the “philosophy of this rock sitting on my lawn.” And this field would fit your definition of philosophy. But there is a clear hierarchy here that is not being obeyed.

Religion from certain perspectives is just made up stories. Should these made up stories be made into a field of study that is a sibling branch of science? Call it the study of religion or made up stories, no point in calling it a philosophy and giving it the same weight as science.

Consider Newton. He pursued physical theories, alchemy and theological studies with similar amount scholarship and zest. His physical theories obtained popularity due to its utility. And his theological and alchemical studies didn't give the world any material benefits and so the world calls those areas of his output "random speculations". But at the core of all these three attempts is a probing, speculative mind. That is my definition of philosophy, that there is an intensely curious mind, which will pour forth effort in understanding the world (including oneself). Newton's subject area was called "Natural Philosophy" for nothing. There are less "successful" philosophers and streams of philosophy, of course.

‘A probing speculative mind” is the rule for what goes into philosophy? I’m sure that the people who came up with a technical basis for creationism also were probing and quite speculative making creationism a philosophy.

Some vague “ a probing speculative mind” is not a good definition for a field of study. It’s way to broad and lacks preciseness.

Philosophy is a PROCESS of enquiry (hopefully "skilled"). It is difficult to compress a long-running & haphazard process into precise definition. You can label the process, talk about various aspects of the process, share examples and so on, but it is perhaps not sensible to define it too precisely. Theories you get at the end of any process of enquiry, whether they are workable or not, are PRODUCTS. Products by their very nature will be well-defined or precise.

I mean given that "creationsim" is an emerging science it classifies as a process which still fits your definition of philosophy.

Heck anything that is a "process" that involves speculative probing is a philosophy according to that definition.

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