Philosophy
Philosophy names 2 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Philosophy a Diogenes Laertius to have been suggested by Pythagoras
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a Diogenes Laertius to have been suggested by Pythagoras, who, on being complimented on his wisdom, said that he was not wise, but a lover of wisdom ( philos sophia), the Deity alone being wise. Philosophy, while earnest in amassing knowledge, aimed chiefly at penetrating to the principles of things. Popularly, it is divided into natural and mental philosophy, the former investigating the physical laws of nature, the latter those regulating the human mind. The term philosophy is now generally restricted to the second of these. Even as thus reduced it has a very wide sphere. Thus, there is a philosophy of history ( see HISTORY). All the nations of antiquity had a philosophy, that of the Greeks being specially celebrated. The chief schools were: The Pythagorean, commenced about 500 B. c .; the Platonic 374 B. C .; the Peripatetic, 334 b. c .; the Sceptic, 334 B. c .; the Cynic, 330 B. C .; the Epicurean, 306 B. c .; the Stoic, 280 b. c .; Academy, 160 b. c.; the New Platonists, A. D. 200 (?). Of modern systems the perceptive and sensational philosophy of Locke arose about 1690; the idealistic of Berkeley and Hume, 1710; the commonsense philosophy of Re Reid, etc., 1750; the transcendental of Kant, 1770; the scientific philosophy of Fichte, 1800; the idealistic philosophy of Hegel in 1810; the positive philosophy of Comte in 1830, and the evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer in 1852, or more decidedly in 1855. Also the course of sciences read in the schools, and required for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the universities of Germany, etc., and corresponding to Arts in the United States. For more modern philosophy_consult the works of James, Royce, Bergson, Von Mach, Sidgwick, Taylor, ete.
Philosophy FATHER OF. See THALES
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
FATHER OF. See THALES.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
Collier's list of "more modern" philosophers in 1921 — James, Royce, Bergson, Mach, Sidgwick — reads today as a roster of the recently dead: Bergson in particular, then world-famous, is now a specialist's interest, and Herbert Spencer's "evolutionary philosophy," given pride of place as the newest system, has few defenders. The same year Collier's went to press, Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus appeared, and the decades after it brought the Vienna Circle's logical positivism, the analytic tradition built on Frege and Russell, Husserl's and Heidegger's phenomenology, and post-war existentialism — none of them visible in this entry. The old split between "natural" and "mental" philosophy is now complete: physics, chemistry and psychology are simply sciences, and university philosophy departments have organised instead around logic, ethics, metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of language and mind, with John Rawls's A Theory of Justice (1971) reviving political philosophy. What has held is the Greek core of the story — the Pythagorean etymology, the schools from Plato to the Neoplatonists — which is still how the subject's history is taught, though curricula now increasingly set it beside Chinese, Indian and Islamic traditions.
Written for this edition, 2026.