Literally 'love of wisdom', a subject which deals with the most general questions about the universeand our place in it. Is the world entirely physical in its composition and processes? Is there any purpose to it? Can we know anything for certain? Are we free? Are there any absolute values? Philosophy differs from science, in that its questions cannot be answered empirically, by observation or experiment; and from religion, in that its purpose is entirely intellectual, and allows no role for faith or revelation.

Philosophy tends to proceed by an informal but rigorous process of conceptual analysis and reasoning. Its major branches are metaphysics,epistemology (or theory of knowledge), ethics, and logic (especially the theory of meaning, formal logic now being regarded more as part of mathematics).

Philosophy is thus concerned with the common core of human knowledge and experience but also with the concepts, modes of argument, and foundations of other special subjects, so that there are, for example, philosophies of science, history, art (aesthetics), politics, and religion.

Western philosophy is conventionally divided into several overlapping periods or traditions:

Greek and Roman, from the 6th-c BC to the 6th-c AD, with Platoand Aristotle setting the agenda for almost all that follows;

Medieval, from Augustine in the 4th-c to the 15th-c, a period when Muslims, Jews, and Christians all tried to relate the classical inheritance, particularly from Aristotle, to their different religious traditions;

Renaissance, the humanism of the 14th-c to the 16th-c;

b>Early Modern, 16th-c and 17th-c, when such figures as Descartes, Locke, and Leibniz began to work out the philosophical implications of the scientific revolution;

Enlightenment, the consequent liberalism and empiricism of the 18th-c;

and Modern, the 19th-c and 20th-c, marked by the separation from philosophy of separate sciences, such as logic and psychology, and the professionalism of the subject around the core questions of epistemology, metaphysics, and the theory of meaning.

There are of course other non-Western philosophical traditions, some of which intersected at various points with Western philosophy (Islam, Judaism) and some of which take quite separate paths (Indian, Chinese).

More on Philosophy

Philosophy is the critical study of the most fundamental questions that humankind has been able to ask. Philosophy asks what is the nature of reality? Do our perceptions of reality match the actual reality that is "out there"? What does it mean to think, to have a mind? How can we know that other minds (i.e. other thinking beings) actually exist? Is there a difference between right and wrong, and if so, how can prove this? How do we define rules that allow us to apply theoretical ideas of right and wrong in practical situations? What do we mean by the word "God"? Does God exist? Philosophy studies such concepts as existence, goodness, knowledge, and beauty. It asks "Is knowledge possible, and if so "What is knowledge?" Philosophy is the critical, speculative or analytical study of any of these topics.