What kind of role and why is Philosophy the best for it, and not, let's say discrete mathematics and computational theory for logic or political science, sociology and psychology for the social moral calculus?
Because law and politics are both based entirely upon value judgments. "How should society be ordered?" is not a scientific question, but rather a normative one.
I've heard some people try to reduce all political questions to utilitarianism, but that itself is a particular conception of how society should be ordered, one which I suspect few would fully agree with.
Or rather, what has philosophy contributed that those things haven't already covered or surpassed and why would those solved problems be interesting?
Going back to politics, one of the most important writings in the past fifty years is Rawls' A Theory of Justice. It's pure philosophy, yet has had a major influence in how we approach certain political problems.
Do you really believe that professors or foundations would find beetle classification to fund JUST beetle classification? Have you actually checked what biologists do before you said this?
I feel like you left some words out here, but assuming I'm reading you right, you're suggesting that animal classification is done for reasons other than animal classification. Like what?
And if you are looking things up, you really should be working through the math, because if you aren't you are merely fooling yourself into understanding what's really going on. Human brains aren't designed for understanding physics unless it has crutches; and right now the only crutch I know of is math or incredible genius (Archimedes level) and even incredible geniuses have independently concluded that math... is still really good.
Without human brains, there would be no "physics." All science is just an attempt for the lowly human intellect to come to terms with an irrational cosmos. I still find it a little unusual, given how well-read you are in science, that you would cling to the logical positivism that has been dead and buried in philosophy for quite a long while now.
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et tu, Joey Crawford?
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