There are great many reasons for studying what philosophers 1.________ have said in the past.
One is that we cannot separate the history of philosophy from which of science. Philosophy is 2.________
large discussion about matters on which few people are quite 3.________ certain, and those few hold opposite opinions.
As knowledge increases, philosophy buds off the sciences. For an example, in the ancient world and the Middle Ages 4.________ philosophers discussed motion.
Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas taught that a moving body would slow down until a force 5.________ were constantly applied to it.
They were wrong. It goes on moving unless something slows it down. But they had good arguments on their side, and if we study these, and the experiments which proved them right this will help us to distinguish truth 6.________
from false in the scientific controversies of today. 7.________
We also see how different philosopher reflects the social 8.________ life of his day.
Plato and Aristotle, in the slave-owning society of ancient Greece, thought man’s highest state was contemplation rather than activity. In the Middle Ages St.
Thomas believed a regular feudal system of nine ranks of angels. Herbert 9.________ Spencer,
in the time of free competition between capitalists, found the key to progress as the survival of the fittest. Thus 10.________ Marxism is seen to fit into its place as the philosophy for the workers, the only class with a future.