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Essay on Philosophical beliefs
Philosophy is the coherent and vital inquiry into basic main beliefs. Philosophy is time and again divided into four main branches: metaphysics, the investigation of ultimate reality; epistemology, the study of the genesis, strength, and limits of acquaintance; principles, the study of the nature of morality and judgment; and aesthetics, the study of the nature of beauty in the fine arts. As used at first by the ancient Greeks, the term philosophy meant the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake. Philosophy comprised all areas of speculative thought and included the arts, sciences, and religion.
As special methods and principles were developed in the various areas of knowledge, each area acquired its own philosophical aspect, giving rise to the philosophy of art, of science, and of religion. The term philosophy is often used popularly to mean a set of basic values and attitudes toward life, nature, and society—thus the phrase “philosophy of life.” Because the lines of distinction between the various areas of knowledge are flexible and subject to change, the definition of the term philosophy remains a subject of debate.
Western philosophy is normally well thought-out to have begun in earliest Greece as conjecture about the fundamental nature of the physical world. In its earliest form it was impossible to differentiate from natural science. The writings of the most primitive philosophers no longer exist, except for a few fragments cited by Aristotle in the 4th century BC and by other writers of later times.
The first philosopher of historical record was Thales, who lived in the 6th century BC in Miletus, a city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor. Thales, who was revered by later generations as one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, was interested in astronomical, physical, and meteorological phenomena. His scientific investigations led him to speculate that all natural phenomena are different forms of one fundamental substance...............
