Philosophy is Quite Useless

I went on a boat trip yesterday to the island of Staffa off the west coast of Scotland. During the trip the skipper asked me if I knew how Columbus had deduced that land was ahead when he was approaching the Americas – what 3 things had Columbus noticed? I had a hunch about one (sea birds) but it seemed pointless to offer just one when three were required. The skipper looked at me with a grin and said “Ah, you see, we had a good education on the island of Iona!” The answer, he told me, was birds, driftwood and cloud formations, at which point he indicated the distinctive clouds hovering above the distant islands of Coll and Tiree.

Of course this isn’t philosophy, it’s knowledge, lore and understanding. It’s the application of observation to the realities of life and the struggle for survival. It’s empirical and testable and reliable and we call these things "facts".

There are two types of facts which are interesting to think about here: facts which are like tools - which allow us to achieve other things, to recognize that certain clouds indicate the presence of land etc - and facts which have no obvious utility. These useless facts are observations of simple patterns, affiliations and connections between things; the way’s things appear or interrelate. Whilst these observations may have no immediate or obvious utility it’s still the case that useful facts have frequently emerged out of these apparently useless ones. Certainly not all useless observations are destined to become useful but we are nonetheless programmed as beings to notice patterns and connections between things, despite our accompanying (but complimentary) tendency to doubt, question and test the fruits of such observations.

But since it’s both a natural tendency to observe and speculate about our observations and since utility occasionally emerges from such speculations, we should be unrepentant about our enquiries into things which, to some people, might seem senseless or purposeless nonsense, since who knows from whence the next important discovery will emerge from the fog of uncertainty?

Staffa, Fingal's Cave, JMW Turner, 1832

In his 1773 descriptions of Scotland’s Western Isles, Samuel Johnson devoted a single paragraph to the Island of Staffa. It begins thus:

“When the Islanders were reproached with their ignorance, or insensibility of the wonders of Staffa, they had not much to reply. They had indeed considered it little, because they had always seen it; and none but philosophers, nor they always, are struck with wonder, otherwise than by novelty.”

Staffa, The Clam Shell Cave, James Valentine, Undated

(This post originated from a discussion on Sean's Reflective Journal blog here)