Flippantly: science accretes ideas, while philosophy sheds them. In other words: the progression you perceive in science (and mathematics, etc.) has historicall

Flippantly: science accretes ideas, while philosophy sheds them. In other words: the progression you perceive in science (and mathematics, etc.) has historically occurred because of parallel progressions in philosophy. That has been less true of science for the past century, but it's still very true of mathematics. > Is that also a progression of insights in a similar way? Yes: Western philosophy is a "tradition" in the sense that it has a clear (branching and twisting) lineage from pre-Socratic thought to contemporary philosophy. There are lots of commonly recommended "history of philosophy" books that can provide that overview; Russel's "A History of Western Philosophy" is a commonly recommended one.