Philosophy: The Study of Wisdom, Reason, and the First Principles of Life

Philosophy is the science which by the natural light of reason studies the first causes or highest principles of all things is, in other words, the science of things in their first causes, in so far as these belong to the natural order. The purpose of philosophy appears to be completely erroneous. To insist that the modern practice of philosophy is exclusively defined by its historical meaning is a form of genetic fallacy; specifically the etymological fallacy or the assumption that a word's meaning can be discerned from its etymology or origins. Philosophers were once called wise men. It was Pythagoras who first invented the term philosophy, observing that wisdom belongs in the strict sense to God alone, and for that reason not wishing to be called a wise man, but simply a friend or lover of wisdom.