Nobody told Galileo and Newton what the rules generating the world’s behavior were, but they were able to go a long way toward figuring them out.
They started with rigorously-defined phenomena. Galileo was famous for taking careful and exacting measurements—he was able to figure out some of the world’s rules because he could notice the relationships between precisely-defined and -measured things.
Nobody gets anywhere, most especially in philosophy, without rigorous definitions of the relevant concepts. You rely on vague, intuitive understandings, and you accomplish nothing.
Nobody gets anywhere, most especially in philosophy, without rigorous definitions of the relevant concepts. You rely on vague, intuitive understandings, and you accomplish nothing.