My View of Philosophy, Blog 5

Katelyn Parmenter

Mrs. Wagener

AP English 11

8 August 2013

                                                           My View of Philosophy

                Sophie’s World is a philosophical novel full of claims and truths made by many philosophers. The topics in the novel range from dreams to nature to women. All of these ideas come from intelligent individuals. These philosophers did not aim to please the public when they did their research and made their opinions public. I do not agree with all of the claims in the novel. Even though a few of the claims did not settle well with me, I still kept an open mind as I read Sophie’s World.

            In the beginning of Sophie’s World, I learned that Parmenides thought that nothing in the world could ever change, while Heraclitus thought that the world was in a constant state of change. Heraclitus could tell the world was always changing because he trusted his senses. I do not agree with Parmenides. The world changes every day, especially nature; trees are cut down, new animals are born, and new plant species are discovered. Also, a human’s senses allow them to know what is going on around them when a part of their body is incapable of doing its job. For example, if someone cannot hear, they can use their eyes to infer about the sounds that are surrounding them.

Further along in the book, Alberto teaches Sophie about empiricism. Empiricists believe that there is nothing in the mind that is not first in the senses. In other words, a human has no ideas about the world that they have not witnessed or heard about. I agree with the empiricists and Aristotle. Their claim ties into dreams. Every face seen in a dream has been seen in reality. The brain is not capable of creating human faces. Dreams are thoughts and experiences turned into scenes.

            In Sophie’s World, the course of philosophy Sophie is learning is centered on one main analogy: most people in the universe are deep inside a white rabbit’s fur not thinking of unusual questions about the world while philosophers are trying to climb those hairs to look directly into the magician’s eyes to uncover the truths about the planet. I see myself as someone who is slowly working their way up the hairs. I had not really thought about philosophy until I was given the task of reading Sophie’s World. Reading this novel resulted in me thinking about philosophical questions I never had before. I am learning to look at my surroundings and the world in a different light, thanks to Jostein Gaarder’s novel.