Philosophy is kind of human activity, related with the analysis of motivation and classification of the human knowledge.
The most important at this classification are the restrictions assumed a priori about this knowledge.
The most structured and restricted are
sciences;
Many restrictions and hard requirements are applied to a science, these requirements help to estimate, appreciate the sciencific
achievements.
More freedom is allowed in the construction of
religions;
The amount of various religions exceeds the number of different sciences, and their areas of applicability overlap stronger.
Even more free is the art (that includes the literature); the products of art are so independent, that is is difficult to read about various literatures, as one speaks about various sciences of various religions.
Sciences
One is free to use any communication language and any form for the description os any thing: paint pictures of some object, phenomenon, or write a poem about it, ets., but some specific way to do it happened to be especially efficient; and the special ter, sciences, is used to indicate this way.
Science kind of human knowledge, human achievements, and human activity related to elaboration of the
specific language, id est, system of concepts and notations for usable description of reproducible phenomena of any origin,
characterized in the following:
Each scientific concept has limited range of Applicability.
Each concept allows the verification: Within the terms of already accepted language, some experiment with some specific result, that confirms the concept, can be described).
Each concept allows the negation: Within terms of this concept, some experiment with some specific result, that negates the concept, can be described. No internal contradictions for the concept are known.
New concepts follow the principle of Correspondence: new theories explain the success of already established theories.
Co-existence of mutually-contradictive concepts is allowed; if the different concepts provide the same result, the simplest is considered as main; other, more complicated, are considered as alternatives.
No absolute true can be elaborated in any of sciences, because every scientific concept (even established one)
can be negated, rejected due to the contradiction to some observations or experiments, or due to discovery of the internal contradictions. This can be illustrated with the verse
Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
It did not last: the Devil howling "Ho!
Let Einstein be!" restored the status quo.
It happened that not so true is the Ptolemaic Geocentric model, then - the Copernican model with circular orbits,
then the Newtonian mechanics, then the Einstein's Special theory of Relativity, and so on.
One may expect, that the same will happen, soon or late, with the Quantum Gravity.
Not only
physics is organized in such a way, but also other sciences.
For example, the concept of gradual conversion of pre-historic monkey into the humankind happens at least doubtful after
discovery of chromosomes and genetics; this made doubtful also the scientific honesty of those paleontologists, who had reported the recovery of the remains of the gradual stages of the smooth transition from the species with 48 chromosomes in genotype to that with 46 chromosomes.
In science, one has no need to claim any specific statement as "absolute true"; so the term "true" can be used as
one of two possible values (true or false) of a logical variable. However some identities
may be considered as an absolute true, at least while no mistake is revealed in the deduction and no internal contradiction is reported for the system of axioms, used. For example the identity
2+2=4
can be considered as absolute true, while no no mutual contradiction among the axioms of arithmetics are reported; one may believe, that during his/her life, no such contradiction will be found. This topic is considered in the article
Mizugadro's number
Gods can be like humankind, like Jesus from (Nasareth, Buddha, Lenin) as
(the Worldwide Communist Revolution, or the Holy Spirit). In any of these cases, God may like or dislike some actions of humans.
The preferences of gods are formulated in the canonic texts; they determine that is good and what is evil
This gives the motivation to the believers; they live ant act not for themselves, but for the God.
Some religions justify the cruelty and raising of wars, if they are are desirable to God:
Abraham's Sacrifice of Isaac, or
the Crusades,
the murder of the Czar and his family.
The God converts the crime into the honest action:
he saves the Isaac, excuses the Soviet-Finish war by the strategic needs of the Soviet Union (and, therefore, needs of the
Worldwide Communist Revolution), and so on.
Many religions avoid refutable concepts.
The concept is refutable (negable), if some observation or experiment, that negates the concept, can be described in terms of terms of this concept. For example, the statement
The current generation of Soviet people will live under communism
is refutable; based of such a declaration, the next generation may shame the soviet veterans as impostors.
Examples of the irrefutable statements are: God gives immortal Soul to every human, or
righteous will be accepted at the heaven.
Other philosophic concepts
The philosophical branch that consider typically religious concepts (God, good, evil) but do not postulate
any certain properties of God is somewhere between science and religion. An example of such a concept is the
positivistic plirallism. This concept suggest that every individual builds-up his own moral norm, that fit him/her best;
in particular, the Bible but
not only the Bible, but books of other religions too, can be used as sources of wisdom.
The religions play the important place in the Human knowledge and the Human history.
Those religions, that are enough tolerant with respect to all other kinds of human knowledge, foment the
stable development of the society.
However, the religions cannot substitute the
science
as the sciences cannot substitute the religions.
Since the past century, the positivistic pluralism did not get much spreading nor significant development.
Therefore, we may expect that it also can substitute neither sciences not religions.
Also, some other literature, that refers to the motivation of the human activity, can be qualified as philosophic,
even if it does not deal with the science or religion; so , the definition in the preamble could be extended.
In this dictionary, I try not to avoid other meanings of the term "philosophy" and use only the definition given
in the preamble.