ABSTRACT
Isaiah Berlin has described philosophy as dealing with those questions for which there is no clear agreement on where to look for answers. Philosophy is sometimes described as a discipline or a science or a field of knowledge. The Greek origins of the term involve two words meaning friend of or love of wisdom. In the Western intellectual tradition, we have fragments of philosophical writing that date back more than 2,500 years. The first complete writings that we have are from Plato and Aristotle, Greek philosophers who lived in Athens in the fourth century BC. Philosophy deals with many questions that are also the subject of religion, but the two are not the same. There are two basic approaches that we take when we try to find answers, whether as philosophers, as scientists, or as ordinary thinking humans. One is called induction, the other deduction.
