I recently leaned the rather fascinating fact that 97% of all Wikipedia pages lead to "philosophy" if you click the first link that shows up enough times. There are many theories as to why this pattern exists, but at least one explanation is that philosophy is the most wide-ranging field, the "mother of all sciences". This is sort of reflected in the word's etymology: through Old French filosofie and Latin, it comes from the Ancient Greek word philosophia, which meant "loving wisdom". The roots there are philos, or "beloved" (which is from philein, meaning "to love", and eventually has an unknown origin), and sophos, which meant "wisdom" (and eventually derives from the Proto-Indo-European reconstruction sehp, "to try", but that's contested). Usage of the word philosophy has decreased since the early 1960s.
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AUTHORHello! I'm Adam Aleksic, a sophomore studying linguistics and government at Harvard University, where I founded the Harvard Undergraduate Linguistics Society. I also have disturbing interests in politics, vexillology, geography, board games, conlanging, and law.
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