My sense is both academic philosophy and science are caught up in their various ruts/feedback loops, that getting ahead means digging in deeper, rather than being particularly objective.
Some examples;
Consider that to the Ancients, gods were what we would call ideals, metaphors, memes today. Much as Rodin's, The Thinker would be a metaphor for cognition. Consider any of those old gods, spirits, heroes, saints, etc and consider them as idealizing some trait, locus of perception, etc.
We have been wrapped up in monotheism for the last couple thousand years, but to the Ancients, it amounted to monoculture. One people, one rule, one god. Ancient Israel was a monarchy. The Big Guy Rules. Rome adopted Christianity for the monotheism, as Constantine brought the Empire back together. While the pantheistic origins of the Trinity were obscured. The Big Guy Rules
Democracy and republicanism originated in pantheistic cultures. Lots of ideas and ideals competing.
The problem is that ideals are not absolutes. When you think your ideal is absolute, then it cannot be questioned and all others are false gods. Might that go to the source of some current problems?
The universal is the elemental, so a spiritual absolute would be the essence of sentience, from which we rise, not an ideal of wisdom and judgement, from which we fell. The light shining through the film, than the stories playing out on it.
How about time?
As these mobile organisms, this sentient interface our bodies have with their situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is as the present going past to future, yet the evident reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
The energy is "conserved," because it manifests this presence, creating time, temperature, pressure, color, sound. Frequencies and amplitudes, rates and degrees.
Energy goes past to future, because the patterns generated go future to past. Energy drives the wave, the fluctuations rise and fall. No tiny strings necessary.
Consciousness also goes past to future, while the perceptions, emotions and thoughts giving it form and structure go future to past. Though it is the gut processing the energy, feeding the flame, while the nervous system sorts the patterns. Thus the academic obsession with information.
Different clocks can run at different rates simply because they are separate actions. Think metabolism.
That culture is about synchronizing our behaviors as one larger social organism, it might seem there should be one universal flow of time, but we don't all march to the beat of the same drummer.
Or Big Bang Theory;
When it was realized that cosmic redshift increases proportional to distance in all directions, it either meant we are at the center of the universe, or this redshift is an optical effect. Then it was decided that space itself must be expanding, because "spacetime!"
Totally ignoring the basis of the premise was the speed of light is measured at a CONSTANT in every frame. So if space were to expand, the speed of light would have to increase proportionally, in order to remain CONSTANT!
Instead, two metrics are derived from the speed and spectrum of the same light. If the speed were being treated as the numerator, it would be a "tired light" theory, but as an "expanding space" theory, the speed is still the explicit denominator. The metric, the Ruler, used to measure this expansion.
Now having raised these and a number of other points over the years, I realize everyone is going to tell me I just don't understand the math, because math is the modern God. The current omniscient omniscience.
The fact is that both the scientists and the philosophers are out to lunch.
