If one thinks about the meaning of life and the Universe much, it will effect one's opinions and values about ordinary secular concerns; and that isn't a bad change. Mazny people labor in the lines of social existence without thinking about the cause for issues and events beyond their own experience-and that affects the entire context of human social existence. Human beings share 80% of their genome with cattle. The difference between human beings and cattle is not just a result of some junk D.N.A. that set growth rate and form differences in a minority of genes, it is a spiritual and physiological ability to reason about philosophical questions rather than to exist performing the functions of the hive. Every day its important too think about this phenomena of being alive and of the effects the 'hive' of human society is having upon the planet and our species prospects for survival-people talk about the future of the Earth in billions of years-as if evolution hasn't been deformed by human science and the world too in danger of destruction because of the radical changes motivated by competition and greed, technology and fortunate spatial limits to resource over-use.
Philosophy has many disciplines to help with thinking about reality. One may think about how one thinks of the 'external;' world, or of how one thinks about thought, it is practical to learn inductive and deductive logic along with symbolic logic for language analysis. Philosophy helps one to think for oneself about life and to decide for one's self about what is and isn't important.
Value theory alone may help overcome the rampant corrupt of modern society and business practices. Political philosophy and raving corrupt language of the broadcast media can materialize with evil political leadership producing debt and death. Wise guy advantaged individuals may rewrite the meaning of truth to promote their own domination while one's own personal interests are exterminated with assisted social biases trained in willing devotees of corrupt cults. Philosophical thought may help to overcome the evils of the world, and that is only the beginning.
Reality itself is uncertain as is what perceptions perceive. Life is temporary and changes a lot...everything changes-what does it all mean, and what knowledge about what really is can be trusted? Popular theories like evolution may be shallow and misinterpret cosmology and creation, while commercial Christian radio cults can become cults of death encouraging followers to tithe a lot and croak with rewards compensating after death. That can obviously become a very corrupting death and exploitation racket used by the crooked with the high priests headgear paraphernalia on while an egalitarian priesthood of believers shoring up democracy and truth in the world is cast aside with Martin Luther and Jesus Christ.
The various branches of philosophy may provide the individual with knowledge that the majority of the public is wrong about politics and macro-economic issues routinely. Such awareness that the driving along in dogmatic slumber S.U.V. majority humming along with a deficit credit report and paying 4 dollars per gallon of gas did not buy a sub-compact powered by high quality electric energy components or in-road power-lines are politically clueless about making independent energy decisions for themselves can make the philosophically educated aware of the vast realm of opportunities to improve the quality of life of the masses in modern society. Political and social philosophy coupled with the philosophy of energy and the environment provide contrasts of the way corporatist political influence over the American Government revealed in readings of the philosophy of government retards improvements in the quality of life for the majority of Americans by inertially repressive power and representative ignorance.
In reading John Barrow's 'New Theories of Everything' I'd realized that I had encountered a book reviewing cosmology that would stimulate creative thought and serve to synthetically catalyze some awareness of subjects that seemed multifariously phenomenal and juxtaposed in the field of cosmology. M-Theory such as Brian Greene as elaborated in his books and various other cosmological ideas simultaneously exist yet aren't really in conflict in all content. Some content overlaps and some is exclusive, and all attempt to illuminate the nature of reality that is objectively observable.
Barrow wrote that science can be defined as 'the transformation of lists of observational data into abbreviated form by the recognition of patterns'. That sounds a little like the late philosopher W. Van Ormand Quine's 'disquotation theory of truth' in which saying something is true abbreviates and obviates the need to enumerate each particular element or condition being referred to as actually being so. Barrow wrote that 'algorithmic compressibility' is possible with patterns that repeat in mathematics (such as positive numbers) and with those of nature. Of course the development of patterns representing observational data in physics and the cosmos comprise cosmology.
The philosopher Plato could fairly be credited with inventing the idea of forms or patterns in nature and in cosmology yet some sticklers will of course prefer to say that Parmenides invented all Greek philosophy that provided ideas to Plato. Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophical treatment of Platonic forms or better compared the ideas of the neo-Platonist philosopher Plotinus are most important in detailing and analysis he made of the patterns one's own mind imposes upon sense data, and how the forms that exist in nature are constructions made in mind in preference for the way human beings think. Human beings make decisions and think in relation to their subjective theoretical knowledge content.
Algorithmic compressibility of patterns in language is different than in mathematics to a certain extent, yet language is itself a non-compressed use of logic to understand the nature of observational data and one's own thoughts about it. Historical and literary reasoning like the life sciences tend to use far more particular and concrete thought and language than does philosophy and physics in cosmological and quantum cosmological contexts. Life sciences as in biology and even evolutionary observations do not induct structural contexts via abstract mathematical processes such as Einstein or Pauli utilized when investigating the human genome's functions-instead they use a trial and error method to assign structures to roles in the body. Quantum cosmology may use Newtonian and superstring logic simultaneously to investigate if gravity diminishes at the cube root of the distance at short ranges because there may be an extra, small hidden dimension-yet the field of investigation seems paradoxically less complex in quantum cosmology because the elements while comprising the mass of the Universe are in principal reducible to a unified field.
Barrow attributes scientific preference in the west for a pervasive unified field in part to monotheistic religious influence; a monotheistic God without pluralistic little gods is a comparatively relevant pattern paradigm for a unified cosmic law-field analogous to an omnipotent monistic God.
The paradigm of pattern analysis in everyday thinking as well as formed and accepted meta-social pattern paradigms (dogma) are common. In politics the concepts of left and right though outmoded in value are put out by the globalist owned broadcast media to redistribute wealth to the top 1% from the middle class and poor. Historically the United States had a far better distribution of wealth than today, and if one cares about freedom and believes that a free people is better than a oppressed people the fair allocation of wealth in order to prevent tyranny by a minority (of communist rulers, royals or C.E.O.'s) is necessary. After world war two the top 1% had as little as 13% of the nation's wealth-now in the 21st century they have 50% and the U.S.A. is in decline. Pattern paradigm recognition is important for good thinking as one can be wrong.
In Iraq the United States won a war to end the Bathy Party rule of Saddam Hussein in 2003. Since then the United States has been practicing nation building and government construction with mixed results. That activity isn't a war yet the Democratic Party like a bunch of drunks considers it still to be a war.
Rebuilding Iraq with a military force that doesn't speak Arabic is like writing a novel through a translator or two-it doesn't turn out quite as one would like. The Iraqi people aren't stupid and it isn't helpful to tell them that America is at war in Iraq in some way. The United States is simultaneously trying to support or build a government and provide anti-terror and police forces or reinforcement until the new Iraqi Government can provide those services for themselves. When the former government was removed it created a situation of natural anarchy that needed to be channeled and controlled as Iraq society readjusted. Abandoning that effort would restore anarchy or dictatorship eventually perhaps and maybe halt regional oil production through war-just 30 cruise missiles could take out the majority of Saudi oil production it is believed.
Belief is said by some to be a bias. That reasoning is a sort of post hoc ergo propter hoc way to neutralize any sort of judgment (after this therefore because of this). The book 'Elements of Logic' by Quine took apart the parts of symbolic logic and described how to put it back together again in 'the fell swoop method of logic'. In a sense the verbiage of ideas that simultaneously describe patterns and relations in predicate and propositional form exist within a protocol and continuum of existence in the universe, and some believe in a relationship to a transcendent God.
While evolution theory is a virtual oxymoron because of its concentration upon particular, concrete change cosmology and epistemology may consider general, transcendent principles including a relation to the Creator. The book of Genesis is an apparent compressed analogy of elements of physical creation based upon the spirit, or issued from The Spirit.
Quantum mechanics has developed the idea of quantum superposition from quantum uncertainty. The universal pattern of material and forces represented in the abstract presents many prima facie paradoxes regarding the ability to know it. In theory even ideas that forms in the mind, besides being filtered and formed by Schopenhaurian and Kantian noumenal forces, are themselves deontological phenomenalities from the a priori uncertainty of quantum, mechanics. Ideas too in theory could be super positioned everywhere in the Universe and possibly beyond, and in that amusing direction one finds some congruence with Schopenhauer's ideas about The One and the issuance of the realm of forms and eventually materiality.
The development of patterns within one's own ideas based upon observational evid3ence and the inferences one adds presents a lot of controversial and inaccurate results. Recently I had had some discussion with a non-believer about the 'miracles of Moses'-he thought that the parting of the waters was an idea plagiarized from a story from centuries earlier about a Pharaoh who parted the waters of a lake. Let's consider this briefly...
King Canute ordered the rides to roll back believing too much in his own power. The Pharaoh too believing he was all-powerful needed to have the power to move waters perhaps-so it was written. In ancient Sumer and Akkad popular religion did ascribe personalities to physical things like air, water, stars, land and about everything that functioned or existed for a simple reason-people experienced personality in themselves first hand and believed logically that it was a good explanation for everything else-it all had a spirit inside. The Pharaoh appropriated the idea as a self-proclaimed deity for-himself.
The Jews in exodus on the other hand might have experienced a real tidal event from a tsunami. How can one say if one wasn't present? 'Historians' of the time might have written it as it is presented for these reasons. They see Moses, who has preknowledge from God of the coming event of a water parting and closing approach and motion for things to happen-they happen, and thus write that 'Moses did some miracle'.
In Alaska's Cook Inlet people have been caught by fast in coming tides as they were trapped on the mudflats. The experience of waters parting and closing need not be plagiarized from literary sources when it is a recurring real-world phenomenon in some ways. It is the scale and circumstances of the Moses water event that is remarkable.
The use of philosophy to bring logic to language and observational data in everyday life is wonted more than is known generally, today.