-> "The World of Philosophy"
 -> by Trilobyte
 -> Taken from HOE #1000 (1/9/00)

	i think that philosophy's main purpose is to create a description
 of the world so that philosophers can talk about it in the way that they
 want to.  they can't explain our world in its own terms, so they have to
 develop their own world with its own terms.  they then use those terms a
 lot and build up philosophies about their little world, but really, it
 has very little application in the world in which we live.

	if they were going to be talking about things that really applied,
 they would be talking about convenience stores and coffee and how the two 
 connect, and how when you go to a convenience store and buy a cup of
 coffee, you're having a certain mental and spiritual interaction with the
 employee...

	but there i go being all philosophical also.  maybe there is no
 spiritual world.  maybe that's just another creation developed to hide
 the fact that we can't explain our world using its own terms.

	the world expresses itself using its terms, and we can't
 understand them.  who is it that created this world's terms?  it wasn't
 us.  why do the terms exist?  why do trees grow the way they do, why is
 cement of that certain consistency?  someone can provide answers to these
 questions, but they will involve atoms and mathematical equations.

	oh, so mathematics is the language of nature.  mathematics are our
 representation of the terminology of this world.  then let's develop
 pictures for the plus signs, images for the symbols.  stories for the
 problems.

	oh wait, they've done that too.  that's how they taught math to us
 in grade school, that's how they taught us to apply math to the real
 world.  and since math is the language of the real world, the connection
 shouldn't have been that hard to make.

	it's too bad i understand language better than math.