5 ideas
| 20768 | Like spiderswebs, dialectical arguments are clever but useless [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: He said that dialectical arguments were like spiderswebs: although they seem to indicate craftsmanlike skill, they are useless. | |
| From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.161 | |
| A reaction: Useful for the spider, but useless to Ariston. |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: There are six 'reductive levels' in science: social groups, (multicellular) living things, cells, molecules, atoms, and elementary particles. | |
| From: report of H.Putnam/P.Oppenheim (Unity of Science as a Working Hypothesis [1958]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 10 'Intro' | |
| A reaction: I have the impression that fields are seen as more fundamental that elementary particles. What is the status of the 'laws' that are supposed to govern these things? What is the status of space and time within this picture? |
| 16861 | A false theory could hardly rival the explanatory power of natural selection [Darwin] |
| Full Idea: It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. | |
| From: Charles Darwin (The Origin of the Species [1859], p.476), quoted by Peter Lipton - Inference to the Best Explanation (2nd) 11 'The scientific' | |
| A reaction: More needs to be said, since the whims of God could explain absolutely everything (in a manner that would be somehow less that fully satisfying to the enquiring intellect). |
| 3049 | The chief good is indifference to what lies midway between virtue and vice [Ariston, by Diog. Laertius] |
| Full Idea: The chief good is to live in perfect indifference to all those things which are of an intermediate character between virtue and vice. | |
| From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 07.2.1 |
| 3549 | Ariston says rules are useless for the virtuous and the non-virtuous [Ariston, by Annas] |
| Full Idea: Ariston says that rules are useless if you are virtuous, and useless if you are not. | |
| From: report of Ariston (fragments/reports [c.250 BCE]) by Julia Annas - The Morality of Happiness 2.4 |