" Is the world divided into mind and matter, and, if so, what is mind and what is matter? Does the universe have a purpose? Is it evolving toward some goal? Is mankind merely a tiny lump of impure carbon and water on a small unimportant planet? Or is mankind what he appears to Hamlet? Is there a way of living that is noble and another that is base, or are all ways of living futile? Is there such a thing as wisdom or is it merely an refinement of folly?
To such questions, no answer can be found in the laboratory. The answers of theologians to these questions and their “definiteness” only causes the modern mind to view them with suspicions. The studying of these questions, and perhaps the answering of them, is the business of philosophy.
Since history began, our actions, in innumerable important respects, have depended upon our theories about the world and human life. To understand an age or a nation, we must understand its philosophy, and to understand its philosophy we must ourselves, to some degree, be philosophers. (That is, we must ask questions.)
A more personal answer for our own age, is that science tells us what we can know, but what we can know is little, and if we forget how much we cannot know, then we become insensitive to many things of great importance to us and our world. It is not good either to forget the questions that philosophy asks, or to persuade ourselves that we have found definite answers to them. To teach how to live without certainty, and yet to be paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy, in our age, can still do for those who practice it."
* from Bertrand Russell’s “History of Western Philosophy”