An Introduction to Philosophy

in #philosophy8 years ago (edited)

Preamble

The dwarf sees farther than the giant, when he has the giant's shoulder to mount on.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge

Philosophy

In a time, WHENPEOPLEWROTELIKETHIS, because they had only capital letters and no further semantic symbols, the word φιλοσοφία was in use.
φιλο spelled in latin letters: PHILO
σοφία spelled in latin: SOPHIA
Old Greek had an advanced Alphabet at that time.
In Old Hebrew they had no vowels and would have only spelled
FLSF,
if they had used latin letters.
The vowels allowed more entropy and ideas could be encrypted in shorter bytes.
FLOSF transports much more information than FLSF.
The O bewteen FL and SF marks, that these two words combine into a new word.
They had no empty spaces like I use right now, so words were separated by default.
Other combinations of vowels and consonants at the end of a word could change it's meaning, number or sex.
PHIL O SOPHIA
Translates to modern English as
'Love of Wisdom'
'O' and 'of' remarkably similar, even phonetically.
A recombination into
'Wisdom of Love'
would create a whole new sense -
SOPHIOPHIL would be a whole different concept.

In a time, when people had less words and explanations, than we do now, they often 'personified' natural phenomena.
The Old Greeks did this with a lot of words.
What they couldn't explain and verify physically, they metaphorized.
SOPHIA
Is a Metaphor, a female Personification.
σοφία,
combines skill, cleverness, sound judgement and higher knowledge into one single, female character.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%83%CE%BF%CF%86%CE%AF%CE%B1

The plural
σοφίες
'Wisdoms' was used in an ironic way only.
It means 'stupid, unrelevant'

To explain and to promote the character of SOPHIA is the purpose of this introduction.

Have a great day !

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This is one of my favorite things in language, and the only reason I'm happy I studied ancient Greek for a year and a half. I always think about philosophy as a love of wisdom now. Thanks for this post to help spread the knowledge further :)

Imagine, how glad I am to have studied English :)

that is exactly what it means in greeks btw. :)

Hi, ich wuerde mich freuen wenn Du an einer Umfrage der deutschen Community teilnehmen koenntest. Danke!
https://steemit.com/deutsch/@elyaque/zu-welcher-uhrzeit-seit-ihr-in-steemit-aktiv

ich finde das unfreundlich.
könntest wenigstens voten.

I love etymology (another word you could work over :D ), and watching how slowly language evolves or devolves into meaningless/full words.

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