Combining Philosophers

All the ideas for Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Armand Marie LeRoi and Blasius of Parma

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these philosophers

---

4 ideas

1. Philosophy / C. History of Philosophy / 2. Ancient Philosophy / b. Pre-Socratic philosophy

21355	The Pre-Socratics are not simple naturalists, because they do not always 'leave the gods out' [Leroi]
	Full Idea: The problem with making naturalism the hallmark of Pre-Socratic thought ...is that they do not always 'leave the gods out'; the Divine can usually be found lurking somewhere is their cosmologies.
	From: Armand Marie LeRoi (The Lagoon: how Aristotle invented science [2014], 007)
	A reaction: An important observation. I've been guilty of this simplistic view. We tend to ignore the religious fragments, or we possess so little that we have no idea where religion figured in their accounts.

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 5. The Infinite / k. Infinitesimals

18085	Values that approach zero, becoming less than any quantity, are 'infinitesimals' [Cauchy]
	Full Idea: When the successive absolute values of a variable decrease indefinitely in such a way as to become less than any given quantity, that variable becomes what is called an 'infinitesimal'. Such a variable has zero as its limit.
	From: Augustin-Louis Cauchy (Cours d'Analyse [1821], p.19), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.4
	A reaction: The creator of the important idea of the limit still talked in terms of infinitesimals. In the next generation the limit took over completely.

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 5. The Infinite / l. Limits

18084	When successive variable values approach a fixed value, that is its 'limit' [Cauchy]
	Full Idea: When the values successively attributed to the same variable approach indefinitely a fixed value, eventually differing from it by as little as one could wish, that fixed value is called the 'limit' of all the others.
	From: Augustin-Louis Cauchy (Cours d'Analyse [1821], p.19), quoted by Philip Kitcher - The Nature of Mathematical Knowledge 10.4
	A reaction: This seems to be a highly significan proposal, because you can now treat that limit as a number, and adds things to it. It opens the door to Cantor's infinities. Is the 'limit' just a fiction?

17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 1. Physical Mind

16618	Intellectual and moral states, and even the soul itself, depend on prime matter for their existence [Blasius, by Pasnau]
	Full Idea: Blasius argued that prime matter is the subject of all our intellectual and moral states. This implies that such states cannot exist apart from the body, which seems to imply further that the soul itself cannot exist apart from the body.
	From: report of Blasius of Parma (Les quaestiones de anima (lectures on the soul) [1385], I.8 p.65) by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 06.3
	A reaction: It seems that, under pressure, Blasius recanted this view in lectures given eleven years later.