A HISTORY OF WESTERN PHILOSOPHY
Bertrand Russell's influential 1945 work "A History of Western Philosophy" gives me the impression that until now Western philosophy mostly has been a matter of very smart people expanding on wrong-headed ideas. Ideas such as using for logical starting thinking points the assumed geometrically perfect structure and machine-like functioning of the Universe, and the validity of religious dogma. Of all thinking processes of the past, only the scientific method has proven to be fairly consistently effective -- the "habit of basing our beliefs upon observations and inferences as impersonal, and as much divested of local and temperamental bias, as is possible for human beings," Russell describes it.

And yet, Russel makes clear that the scientific method ignores a vast field of thought traditionally included in philosophy, such as the ultimate value of things. And, "science alone, for example, cannot prove that it is bad to enjoy the infliction of cruelty," he writes.

On a sunny day when fresh breezes animate tall Goldeneye Sunflowers around the stone hut, it seems to me that we humans have done well, thanks to the scientific method, in developing powerful technologies. However, in terms of "... lessening fanaticism with an increasing capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding," as Russell puts it, we are still infantile. In evolutionary terms, already with amphibians and reptiles animals were ordering their lives around genetically programmed urges for sex, territory and status. However, when today I scan world news headlines on the Internet, it looks like the planet's average humans still are mostly governed by snake-brain drives for sex (overpopulated planet), territoriality (wars and such) and status (people enslaved to excessive money-making so as to have as much or more than their neighbors).

To me, this situation means that the vast field of philosophy dealing with how we humans can get along with one another, develop to full potential the talents and predispositions we're born with, and explore the possibility of higher levels of personal spirituality... is practically virgin territory. Even we amateur philosophers can offer some ideas. Here's my idea, my logical starting point, instead of math or religious beliefs, for philosophizing about things:

At this stage we're all infants needing a loving teacher. In this Universe, only Nature always speaks the truth, and only Nature offers paradigms for sustainable living that have been tested and proven over billions of years of evolution.