In the year 2008 anyone can call themselves a philosopher and announce any claim as a philosophical truth, and no one can say that the author is not a philosopher nor the claim is not a philosophical truth; which means philosophy is useless.

Philosophy is useless because it lacks a useful definition so to make philosophy useful I have advanced the simple definition that philosophy is the study of understanding, for understanding is the source of all meaning; without understanding there is no reality, no truth and no meaning. That is, understanding is the process that converts observations into a reality.

And the way an understanding converts observations into a reality is by applying its beliefs to what it observes. Hence an understanding is a set of beliefs coupled to a way of observing.

To allow philosophy to become a science I suggest the following self-evident truths be adopted :

1. Philosophy is the study of understanding.

2. Understanding is the bestowing of meaning upon observations.

3. Meaning is the realisation obtained by applying beliefs to the observations of an understanding —the use of reason.

4. Two Kinds Of Beliefs:

i. Control the Understanding —those bestowed by nature and modified by infancy in the creation of an understanding so are unchangeable: that is, the instincts and infantile experiences, which dictate what the creature should, or should not, do — survive, eat, sleep, multiply, etc.— thus allowing the recognition of right from wrong, and are the morality of the understanding.

ii. Tools of the Understanding — those revealed by the understanding's experience of cause and effect. That is, if you step off a cliff you fall, and these axioms, which are collected and refined throughout the life of the understanding, allow the recognition of true or false and are the knowledge of the understanding.

— this Morality and Knowledge together form the beliefs, or truths, of the understanding. These beliefs, along with its observations, are the understanding. Hence:

5. Truth is the beliefs, or realisations, of an understanding, and form the reality of an understanding.

6. Reality is the creation of an understanding as it is the remembered meanings, or experience, of an understanding and consists of:

i.	The nature of the understanding Its senses	ii.	The position of the understanding What it can observe	iii.	The experience of the understanding The meaning it realises.

7. Wisdom is the habits (traditions) adopted by an understanding to achieve the greatest benefit from its reality.

These beliefs convert Philosophy into a useful tool—a science. This science of philosophy explains not only understanding, reality, and truth, but also language (the medium of understanding) and society (a shared understanding). These explanations allow a better understanding of ourselves by revealing why humanity behaves the way it does in forming a civilization (a dominant society) and why such a society waxes (refines its understanding) then wanes (loses its understanding). But these explanations also condemn our current society as waning (losing understanding) so condemning most citizens as fools, who naturally resent such a judgement.

This means that although the new science of philosophy significantly improves human understanding it is resented by most contemporary citizens who insist upon ignoring the new science, and if they are pressed to recognise it will persecute its proponents.