Quote of the Day

[timelets]

The problem with philosophy, however, was that nobody seemed to agree on anything, and different schools bickered endlessly; the medical world was equally divided into sects, whose exponents debated about causes of diseases, appropriate cures and just about anything else. Looking for some certainty and (like Ptolemy and like many philosophers of this period) for a criterion to distinguish truth from falsity, Galen came to admire the rigour of mathematical proofs, and the consensus they engendered among geometers, arithmeticians and astronomers.

-- S.Cuomo. Ancient Math.

Philosophy seems to be a fundamentally divergent technique for exploring concepts and events. It doesn't have an objective "stop" condition, like math or bargaining. A couple of weeks ago, our Wittgenstein professor briefly discussed the issue of "When to stop explaining to a child why the sky is blue." Ultimately, it boils down to "I don't know" or "I'll tell you more when you grow up and learn more physics."