I was recently reading this substack saying that Philosophy majors with a minor in physics get the most growth in thinking ability. They used the LSAT and GRE tests scores to measure this and I’m not really familiar with these since I’m not from the U.S. The article is by a Professor so I’m leaning towards believing it and also I am interested in philosophy and self-study in general but, I really wanted to get a second opinion on this.
Is Philosophy really that amazing for improving your intelligence? I did see a Neil Degrasse Tyson short where he was disparaging 21st century philosophy as not having any breakthroughs. But he also doesn’t seem that reliable of a guy from my point of view.
I was thinking though that Philosophy is a good entry point to accumulate knowledge and memorize things form different topics and engage with them. Especially if it happens to be this good at training your thinking. But I feel like an armchair keyboard warrior optimizing things right now when I probably should be reading.
I haven’t seen the Degrasse piece, but the idea that philosophy is supposed to have breakthroughs doesn’t sound quite right.
For one thing, many “break throughs” occur when one person connects with the thinking processes of another.
And when open debate is allowed, people tend to expose the limits of thinking taking place in various minds, better allowing ourselves to think about the limits on our own.
In any case, it seems to me that there are too many kinds of philosopher and philosophies to indict philosophy as not having made breakthroughs. It’s not like “philosophy” is some unified mechanism that requires progress or growth as if it were the subject on a graph that competes with other disciplines.
That said, some of the greatest philosophers were indeed well-versed with physics. In fact, metaphysics is birthed out of physics. Stepping beyond the ken of physics is literally where metaphysics gets its name.
So I would say that philosophy is pretty amazing, and your post has a philosophical edge to it. You are thinking about the value of thinking and that pretty much puts you in the field of epistemology, a practice that Degrasse himself exhibits many times.
Whether or not it makes sense to switch to philosophy as a university major is a different question. But anyone who reads philosophy seriously and completes the various thought exercises involved will be hard pressed not to see their intelligence improved.
But I admit that it is possible someone out there wouldn’t.
