David Hume (7 May 1711 - 25 Aug 1776, and pronounced: “Hyoom”) was a Scottish philosopher, a key essayist in the Enlightenment, and most known for his subtle argument against “Causality” using “Induction”. Hume's six-volume History of England (1754 - 1762) was very popular well into the Nineteenth Century. Influenced by the “Empiricism”...

John Bordley Rawls (21 Feb 1921 - 24 Nov 2002), a Harvard University professor, was a leading American figure in Moral Philosophy. Rawls' A Theory of Justice (1971) is considered a primary text in political and ethical reasoning, and he earned a Schock Prize for Logic and Philosophy, and a National Humanities Medal presented by U.S. President Bill Clinton in...

Metaphysics is a difficult branch of Philosophy, but it is rather easy to define: It is the study of the most fundamental concepts and beliefs about those beliefs. “Metaphysical” concepts include Being, Existence, Purpose, Universals, Property, Relation, Causality, Space, Time, Event, and many others. These concepts are fundamental,...

Cybernetics is the study of Communication and Control Theory, typically involving regulatory feedback in living Organisms, Machines, Organizations, and their combinations. For example, it includes the study of computer-controlled Machines such as Automata and Robots, along with the study of sociotechnical systems. The term Cybernetics stems from the Ancient Greek Κυβερνήτης (kybernetes, steersman, governor,...

Dynamism (see Dynamism for encyclopedic information) is a series of treatises in Philosophy and Science by M.R.M. Parrott, addressing subjects in Metaphysics, such as a Theory of Reality, a Theory of Life, Subjectivity, Ethics, and more. Dynamism: A Philosophy and Science Series is available in paperback from Barnes & Noble,...

Timeless is a concept which describes something as being without a beginning or end, or at least seeming that way. It is an eternal or everlasting quality we find in some things. It is the “timeless beauty” of great designs, films, and fashion models. Timeless can refer to being unrestricted to a particular Time, or being independent within Time itself, as in Time Travel. Creative works which have been named...

All Rights Reserved © 2004 & 2007 M.R.M. ParrottThis article is updated from a version which appeared on rimric folio in 2004, and has been protected on GetWiki on behalf of the author, republished here with permission. All rights reserved. “Participating in a Wiki brings many of the same feelings of freedom as having one's own website or participating in a discussion forum, but there...

The history of Philosophy in the West begins with the Ancient Greeks, particularly with a group of philosophers who came to be known as the “Pre-Socratics” - because they appeared before Socrates brought dramatic change to Philosophy. This is not to say that there weren't other pre-philosophical rumblings in Egyptian, Semitic, and...

Thomas Hobbes (5 Apr 1588 - 4 Dec 1679) was an English political philosopher, most famous for his book Leviathan (1651) and his view of a “State of Nature” to avoid as a life which would be “brutish, nasty and short”. His view of the necessity of a powerful central Government, where some may be stronger or more intelligent than others, but none are beyond fear...

PHP (PHP Hypertext Preprocessor) is a programming language originally designed for producing dynamic web pages. PHP is used mainly in server-side scripting, but can be used from a command line interface or in standalone GUI applications. The main implementation is produced by “The PHP Group” and released under the PHP License. It is considered to be free software and is available in most distributions. PHP is generally...

Charles Sanders Peirce (10 Sep 1839 - 19 Apr 1914, and pronounced: “Purce”) was an American philosopher, logician, mathematician, and developer of Semiotics, for which he is largely appreciated today. Peirce considered himself a logician first and foremost, and made major contributions to the development of Formal Logic, while he is still read in...

Modern Philosophy is Philosophy done of course during the “Modern” era of Europe, Britain, and North America. It is not a specific doctrine or school, and while it should not be confused with Modernism in Art or Modernity in History in a literal way, they are all clearly facets of the same era. Although there are certain...

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 - 14 November 1831, and pronounced: “Heygl”) was a German philosopher perhaps most remembered today for the “Master-Slave Dialectic”, though Hegel sought to undo Dualism common in Modern Philosophy. Like Immanuel Kant, Hegel developed a vast and comprehensive philosophical system, an “Absolute Idealism”, and...

Immanuel Kant (22 Apr 1724 - 12 Feb 1804, and pronounced: “Kaunt”) was a Prussian (German) philosopher, generally regarded as the most major figure in Modern Philosophy, put alongside Plato and Aristotle from Ancient Philosophy. This makes Kant one of history's most influential thinkers. Known for his highly articulated...

Baruch Benedict de Spinoza (24 Nov 1632 - 21 Feb 1677) was a Dutch philosopher from a Portuguese Jewish family, whose controversial metaphysical ideas led to cherem (or removal) against him from Jewish Society, and his works were banned by the Vatican. Despite his considerable scientific aptitude, the breadth and importance of Spinoza's work...

Aesthetics (or Philosophy of Art) is a branch of Philosophy focused on the definition of Art in general and how we relate to what is Beautiful to us individually. The word Aesthetics was first used by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, and later Immanuel Kant, whose work on the Aesthetic and...

GetWiki and the GNU FDL Content on GetWiki which has been imported, adapted, and corrected from Wikinfo or Pseudopedia is licensed under the GNU FDL and/or CCL as applicable. Note that Wikinfo also imported content from Pseudopedia, but is no longer the same site. All GetWiki content (imported or not) is licensed under the Creative Commons...

PseudoPhilosophy is any idea or system that masquerades itself as Philosophy while significantly failing to meet even basic intellectual standards. The term is frequently pejorative, and most applications of it are quite contentious. The term bears the same relationship to Philosophy that PseudoScience bears to Science, or Anti-Matter to Matter. PseudoPhilosophy is simply “Bullshit”, in the common vernacular. The...

The Philosophy of Logic is a branch of Philosophy which deals with the scope and nature of Logic, and investigates philosophical problems raised by Logic, such as presuppositions often implicitly at work in theories and applications. It involves questions about how Logic is defined and how different logical systems are connected to each other, as well as...

GetWiki (GetWiki.net) is an interactive PHP/MariaDB collaboration software application, and the concept of “getting wiki” with interactive websites, originated by M.R.M. Parrott in 2003-2004. As the overview explains, GetWiki introduces indexing with Facets and Categories, content-driven Atom/XML Syndication, and XML import of...

Plato (428-27 - 348-47 BC) was a major Greek thinker in Ancient Philosophy, a student of Socrates, founder of the first Academy, and with his student Aristotle and the most important modern philosopher Kant, is still considered one of the singularly important philosophers of all time. Some thirty-five “Socratic” dialogues...

Open Source computer software is that whose “source code”, the code which generates the software's system or purpose, is either in the Public Domain or, more commonly, is copyright-protected by one or more persons or entities and licensed to anyone according to an Open Source License. This usually grants permission to use and redistribute the software, as well as to modify its source code and distribute modified...

Mark Ray Martin Parrott is an American philosopher, writer, musician, photographer, designer, and programmer, known for his early adoption of independent, small press publishing, and as developer and editor of GetWiki, a Wiki website focusing on Philosophy and other subjects. M.R.M. Parrott's books include the Timeless (M.R.M...

Friedrich Nietzsche (15 October 1844 - 25 August 1900, and pronounced: “NeeShuh”) was a Prussian (German) philosopher whose work encompassed Poetry, cultural criticism, philosophical essays, and aphorisms. Including strong elements of Philology, irony and insult, pointed criticisms of Truth and religious pseudo-morality, and...

Systems Theory (or Theorie) or General Systems Theory or Systemics is an interdisciplinary field which studies Systems as a whole. Systems Theory was founded by Ludwig von Bertalanffy, William Ross Ashby and others between the 1940s and the 1970s with focus on Physics, Biology, and Engineering, and it later grew with connections into Philosophy, Sociology, and Economics, as developed by Fritjof Capra and others, as...