What Is the Difference Between Philosophy and Natural History?

Today I was asked a question that, at first hearing, seemed baffling: “What is the difference between philosophy and natural history?”

The questioner felt that philosophy deals with everything, and natural history also touches on everything, so the two seemed more or less the same…

My answer was: philosophy is directed toward problems, whereas natural history faces things. Or, to put it another way, philosophy asks after the ultimate meaning of concepts—such as “What, ultimately, is science?” “What, ultimately, is essence?”—these are the ways philosophy poses its questions. A typical way natural history poses a question is: point at a tree and ask, “What is this?”—“A poplar.” That sort of thing.

In this sense, one might say that philosophy and natural history take exactly opposite approaches: natural history confronts intuitive impressions and experience, and names them with appropriate concepts; philosophy, by contrast, confronts concepts and seeks the corresponding intuitions for them.

Seen this way, the question really was an interesting one~

August 3, 2008

Latest Comments

• physis

  2008-08-29 19:26:25 Anonymous 59.55.254.119 

  haha this way of thinking reminds me of something I once read: one Chinese ancient book classifies animals like this: a) those belonging to the emperor, (b) those smeared with sesame oil, (c) tame ones, (d) suckling pigs, (e) the Sirens, (f) legendary ones, (g) lost wild dogs, (h) those included in this classification, (i) those that are frenzied……

• Gu Chu

  2008-08-29 20:19:29

  What way of thinking?? How did you make that connection?
  That “Chinese ancient book” was obviously Borges’s fabricated attribution. Although Chinese and Western modes of thinking differ greatly, they’re not quite that funny…

• physis

  2008-08-30 01:19:48 Anonymous 59.55.253.23 

  The basis of classification is so absurd! To group philosophy and natural history together under the shared attribute of “touching on everything,” how could it not be bizarre? The person who could ask such a question is probably unprecedented and unparalleled.

• Gu Chu

  2008-08-30 05:26:46

  Oh, I thought you were talking about my line of thought~~

• physis

  2008-08-30 10:06:43 Anonymous 220.176.150.245 

  Uh… the way you put it reminds me of Teacher Liu Huajie: the classic combination of natural history and philosophy

Translated from the Chinese original with AI assistance. The original text is authoritative.