*WHY IS A Ph.D. DEGREE CALLED A “Ph.D.”?*

Why is it called PhD?
Ah, this is one of my favorite tidbits for the modern types that like to dismiss philosophy.

*Doctor of Philosophy.*

Doctor comes to us as a latin word for teacher. Now, it means something more along the lines of scholar or learned person.

But, why are they all doctors of philosophy. Electrical engineering has nothing to do with philosophy, yet getting a PhD in it doesn’t make you a doctor of electrical engineering.

*Why?*

For one, its reflective of history. Much of our academic tradition comes from Ancient Greece, and in that time they didn’t categorize areas of study the way we do now. Before there were physicists, medical doctors, botanists, mathematicians, or historians, there where philosophers.

Philosophers are the first of the learned types, the prototype for academics everywhere. They were the people that go beyond what can be learned through direct experience and waxed about knowledge abstractly, for its own sake. They then refined the tools that allow us to infer and synthesize more complex knowledge by using facts and data remotely, without direct experience.

This is hard to grasp in today’s specialist driven world, but it was much simpler to refer to learned, or even literate, people under a singular term when they were so rare. As it was, most of the great minds in those days were polymaths. Why not stroll the many horizons still relatively close when you’re one of the few people around who can read and write and have the privilege to do so?

Political science was political philosophy. Science was natural philosophy. Mathematics and logic took even longer to separate from philosophy, with it being common up until recent history for mathematicians to consider themselves, first and foremost, as philosophers.

Aside from the historical reason, we keep the tradition because it makes sense.

Many people think of PhD holders as having a much broader understanding of their field, knowing “more” than anyone else. But this isn’t the case. A PhD aims not to teach you all or even most of a discipline, as this would be impossible. Of course, a PhD will have a broader knowledge of their discipline, but more than anything they’ll have a deeper understanding.

Remember, that unlike with a bachelors degree or certificate, there is no standardized test or curriculum you can use to evaluate PhD candidates. Their test is a thesis, and is evaluated by a board of people that are doctors themselves. What they are judging you on is not the knowledge you can regurgitate, and even in some cases it doesn’t matter all that much if your thesis is even correct, what matters is the strength and methods you have of building an argument and defending it.

Drawing from your whole well of knowledge to synthesize a new, testable, stance, finding all the relevant information to evaluate it with, and then using deductive and inductive tools to build an argument and defend it from vicious attack. Or, in other words, philosophy.

At the end of the day, the only thing that is different about an electrical engineer’s thesis and a literature student’s thesis is the acceptable methods and tools specific to the discipline for building and defending arguments. The template is not dependent on the discipline, but on the greater philosophical tradition.

– Author Unknown