ps -- no, i read some sartre and kant in high school and i thought it was pretty interesting. but i often felt these guys wanted to construct really elaborate and difficult systems that allowed them to say very obvious things, like sartre saying we allways have a choice, the choices often suck and so does the world, and there is some meta-suckiness involved with having a choice. well duh, im sorry she dumped you but perhaps your life would suck less if you stopped writing about how it sucked it all the time.
and them some other random geezer come by and say pretty much the opposite, and a 3rd guy come a long and say both are right and wrong and perhaps "to suck" is an ill-defined term, perhaps "blow" is preferrable, and he would propose a post-sucking epistomology.
no, this properly has redeeming values.. like the appreciation of constructing huge and elaborate systems of thought, even though they all seem to be build on clay to some extend. but speaking from personal experience, i think abstract mathematics is much more interesting. First off its much more complex and much deeper than anything i have encountered in philosophy, second of its concrete: You can say very deep and interesting things about the real world in mathematics and you can demonstrate they are actually true, unlike philosophy which seem unable to agree with itself on anything after 3000 years.
but i didnt say philosophy had no redeeming value, i merely noted you said philosophy could explain some things about water... i still wonder what exactly philosophy has to say in that respect.
My own experience with philosophy and water is limited to a novel sartre wrote where a guy pissed his pants the day before he got shot. i think it was called "the wall". come to think about it, it really sucked monkey balls from start to finish. as i recall it had one of the most pathetic plot-devices thrown in near the end so sartre could beat his own drum that even though we thought we didnt have a choice, we do, and it suck. (surprice!).
