Philosophy as the father of science

Philosophy was long regarded as the sole method of thought that would explain phenomena, be it imaginary, concrete, celestial, or terrestrial. Aristotle was a biologist, if we look at his work from today's perspective. He was mainly interested in the species that scattered all over the places. His concern was to collect as many different animals and plants as possible, so that he would have been able to talk about them with greater certainty. However, he was also a strong advocate of categorization and in order to categorize what he had collected, he needed to contemplate on what to put in this or that category or on what makes two things different. This contemplation made him a philosopher, as we understand it today.

His master, Plato, was no different in this respect. His basic concern was to understand the universe and humans within it. But his method was drastically different. For him, in order to figure out what things are and how they work, we needed to seek for universal ideas, which covers (or operates) everything. Hence Plato came up with the idea of Ideas, namely the universal realities. The world surrounding us could only be an aggravate of reflections of those Ideas because it lacked perfection. It was corrupted. To understand these reflections in their perfect state, we needed to contact with those Ideas.

For both of the founding fathers of the Western philosophy, Plato and Aristotle, philosophical inquiry inevitably involves in scientific investigation. Even though their approaches are different (some even claim that they are complete opposites), they shared the same concern: understanding the world surrounding us by way of investigation.

Multiple Histories of Capital

In his chapter on Marx’s critique on capital, Dipesh Chakrabarti ( Provincializing Europe : Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton 2000) tries to deal with the idea that provincialized Europe has a universal and overarching character. Marx criticized capital on two categories: the abstract human and the idea of history. As historicism assumes that capital arose in Europe out of the Enlightenment rationalism and humanism, it constitutes a unity both in time and space. For Chakrabarti, and Marx, the main reason behind this assumption is the need for a homogenous and common unit for measuring human activity. This measurement will of course be designed to reduce diversity and human belongings into one category called ‘labor’. Abstract labor, therefore, is to destroy differences among workers. Abstract labor is abstracted from any empirical history, it is like a ghost. However, paradoxically, capital is in need of a human, concrete, labor in advance in o...

The Civilization of Clash - A Critique

Samuel Huntington, the writer of ‘The Clash of Civilizations’ article, imagines a disagreement between major cultures of the world. He suggests, for the future, a certain separation between civilizations that cannot be avoided. Through the centuries, a fault line between civilizations was created by the different views of God and man, the individual and the group, and so on. This line is also gradually growing because of the unbearable Western military, economic and cultural superiority to others. The line will not soon disappear because it is more fundamental than the separation created by political approaches.

Oppression

The worst oppression is that of knowledge. I think, an expert who assumes he has right to direct you is the most cruel oppressor. If one speaks and gives 'advice' without concerning his audience, their needs and capacities, he actually tries to maintain his authority over them. Knowledge, in this sense, becomes a tool in hands of an expert for sucking all the nourishment from non-expert people. Look at those so-called possessors of knowledge. They are as if gods of the society. Any word coming from their mouths gains an authorization quickly. However, their words not always open locked doors, rather sometimes lock the doors to people in order to keep their privileged position in the society. They consider themselves as ‘gatekeepers’ keeping lay people away from the source of knowledge. They are afraid of that once people get access to the sources, there would be no need for these so-called keepers of knowledge.

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