Theme 1 – Reflection

When I started to read the two text for the first assignment I had a hard time grasping them and understand what to reflect on. Since I study to be an engineer I am so used to always look for an answer that is either right or wrong. But in philosophy there is no right and wrong so I really had to think in another way to start reflecting on what the texts really could mean. It was also difficult to understand all the new concepts and theories that were mentioned in the texts. I am very new to philosophy and it took me a while to get in the mood and start reflecting and understand the meaning of what I read.

In the seminar we talked about why philosophy is relevant for engineers like us and Johan, our seminar leader, had a really good point. He said that we need to see things in terms of meaning and forms instead of facts. By doing this we start to think outside the box and that will help us understand these things in another way. I think he has a good point in this. The majority of my courses are math-courses, physics or other science-courses. So whenever I take a course that is not one of my “usual” courses I realize how locked in I am. I really need to think outside the box when I take these courses and I think that shows how much we actually need philosophy and its way of thinking, even though we might think we don’t need it.