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Oh, well that's not really what "Doctor of Philosophy" means. It comes from the same Greek word, which means "love of wisdom", but it's unrelated the field of p

Oh, well that's not really what "Doctor of Philosophy" means. It comes from the same Greek word, which means "love of wisdom", but it's unrelated the field of philosophy. I also think the philosophy of computer science is very interesting, though. I just saw that Oxford offers a course that combines computer science and philosophy: https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing/computer-science-and-philosophy?wssl=1 https://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listin...

pjmorris 10y ago
Well, I think it's the 'love of wisdom' angle that I saw in my friend's frustration and the article author's distinction between problem understanding and problem solving. I think there's a place for knowledge for knowledge's sake, akin to Hardy's belief that mathematics is worth pursuing for its own sake, not just its applications.
jhanschoo 10y ago
Actually, whereas the word literally means that, the use of the word philosophy to mean a disciplined investigation into questions actually predates even Plato's Academy. The reason why academic titles have the word philosophy in them is because modern investigations have developed from the philosophical tradition. For example, philosophers may have a question, "what is value?", or "what is the nature of the world?", born out of the philosophical tradition. Then, after sufficient discussion and philosophical investigation, they figure out that certain methods, approaches to answering these questions, are very fertile and lead to informative answers, e.g. value as a real-valued mathematical measure, or the nature of the world as a generalization of empirical observation. Such methods may prove to be so fertile that you may have academics spending decades or centuries investigating the implications of that method. Hence you have economics and philosophy.
- hprotagonist 10y ago
  it also has to do with the fact that the title of the degree predates the differentiation of many of the sciences. Newton, for example, would not have described himself as a physicist because that word didn't yet exist. (it was first coined, per the OED, in 1840.) He was a natural philosopher, which meant he thought Aristotle could be wrong and you could prove that.

pjmorris 10y ago

Well, I think it's the 'love of wisdom' angle that I saw in my friend's frustration and the article author's distinction between problem understanding and problem solving. I think there's a place for knowledge for knowledge's sake, akin to Hardy's belief that mathematics is worth pursuing for its own sake, not just its applications.

jhanschoo 10y ago

Actually, whereas the word literally means that, the use of the word philosophy to mean a disciplined investigation into questions actually predates even Plato's Academy. The reason why academic titles have the word philosophy in them is because modern investigations have developed from the philosophical tradition. For example, philosophers may have a question, "what is value?", or "what is the nature of the world?", born out of the philosophical tradition. Then, after sufficient discussion and philosophical investigation, they figure out that certain methods, approaches to answering these questions, are very fertile and lead to informative answers, e.g. value as a real-valued mathematical measure, or the nature of the world as a generalization of empirical observation. Such methods may prove to be so fertile that you may have academics spending decades or centuries investigating the implications of that method. Hence you have economics and philosophy.

hprotagonist 10y ago
it also has to do with the fact that the title of the degree predates the differentiation of many of the sciences. Newton, for example, would not have described himself as a physicist because that word didn't yet exist. (it was first coined, per the OED, in 1840.) He was a natural philosopher, which meant he thought Aristotle could be wrong and you could prove that.