s. For example, biology only studies the commonalities of living things, anthropology only studies the commonalities of human beings. Or a discipline only studies one aspect of all things. For example, optics studies only the optical properties of all things, acoustics studies only the acoustic properties of all things. But philosophy is the most abstract theory. It deals with the commonality of all things, the commonality of all aspects. “Metaphysics” means more abstract than physics.

More than two thousand years ago, the ancient Greek geometrician Euclid established a huge theoretical system of geometry, which starts from several axioms and deduces a series of theorems, which can solve various problems. Philosophers hope to find the origin first, and then start from the origin to establish a system of theorems from top to bottom as geometry dose. Therefore they can deduce all the necessary conclusions and establish the most complete world outlook to solve all the problems of understanding and reforming the world.

It is not easy to live. There are all kinds of pain and disaster. We must fight with the sky, ground and people to survive and to live a happy life. But these struggles have had their successes and failures, and sometimes the failures have been terrible and bloody.

If you want to succeed, you must accept the lessons of failure, find the causes of failure, and find the methods to solve various problems. Sometime finding one cause can solve a lot of problems, and then people think, it would be great if finding one cause could solve all problems. Such a cause is called the “origin”, which is the reason of all problems. The word “philosophy” in Greek language means to love wisdom, of course great wisdom is needed to find solutions to all problems.

Aristotle, Hegel and others tried to establish a theoretical system starting form the origin that could solve all problems, but the systems they established could not solve any problems, and the first step of searching for the origin was not done well.

Philosophers hold that the origin from which all conclusions can be derived is the most abstract noumena, and the theory that studies noumena is called ontology. Various theories have been arguing about origin and noumenon. So philosophy remained there, studying nothing but the origin. So it is not that philosophy only wants to deal with the origin, but that it is incapable of dealing with anything else. A lot of problems were caused to study the origin, such as truth standard, cognition method, dialectical logic, value standard and so on. These problems have not been solved, so philosophy become a tangle without a clue.

Is philosophy useless at all? Of course not. Philosophy plays a big role. Neither exalting it to the sky nor burying it in the ground, philosophy is equal to other subjects. What is the main function of philosophy? It provides people with a holistic world view, a rational belief, the ultimate standard of value and the ultimate standard of truth.

3. Two Kinds of World Views

There are two kinds of world views: the metaphysical world view and the physical world view. The physical world view is the world view provided by the various disciplines of science, including astronomy, physics, history, Darwinian evolution, general evolution, and so on. The metaphysical world view is provided by philosophical ontology, it is the whole world outlook. The physical world view is one part of the metaphysical world view.