11 ideas
| 9406 | A class is natural when everybody can spot further members of it [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: To say that a class is natural is to say that when some of its members are shown to people they pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: He concedes a number of problems with his view, but I admire his attempt to at least begin to distinguish the natural (real!) classes from the ersatz ones. A mention of causal powers would greatly improve his story. |
| 15730 | Extreme nominalists say all classification is arbitrary convention [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Pure, extreme nominalism sees all classification as the product of arbitrary convention. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure what the word 'arbitrary' is doing there. Nominalists are not daft, and if they can classify any way they like, they are not likely to choose an 'arbitrary' system. Pragmatism tells the right story here. |
| 15728 | The naturalness of a class depends as much on the observers as on the objects [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: The naturalness of a class depends as essentially on the nature of the observers who classify as it does on the nature of the objects that they classify. ...It depends on our perceptual apparatus, and on our relatively mutable needs and interests. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: This seems to translate 'natural' as 'natural for us', which is not much use to scientists, who spend quite a lot of effort combating folk wisdom. Do desirable sports cars constitute a natural class? |
| 9407 | Properties imply natural classes which can be picked out by everybody [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: To say there are properties is to say there are natural classes, classes introduction to some of whose members enables people to pick out others without hesitation and in agreement. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: Aristotle would like this approach, but it doesn't find many friends among modern logician/philosophers. We should go on to ask why people agree on these things. Causal powers will then come into it. |
| 15729 | Uninstantiated properties must be defined using the instantiated ones [Quinton] |
| Full Idea: Properties that have no concrete instances must be defined in terms of those that have. | |
| From: Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], 9 'Nat') | |
| A reaction: I wonder what the dodo used to smell like? |
| 8520 | An individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position [Quinton, by Campbell,K] |
| Full Idea: Quinton proposes that an individual is a union of a group of qualities and a position. | |
| From: report of Anthony Quinton (The Nature of Things [1973], Pt I) by Keith Campbell - The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars §5 | |
| A reaction: This seems the obvious defence of a bundle account of objects against the charge that indiscernibles would have to be identical. It introduces, however, 'positions' into the ontology, but maybe that price must be paid. Materialism needs space. |
| 17402 | Mendeleev saw three principles in nature: matter, force and spirit (where the latter seems to be essence) [Mendeleev, by Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Mendeleev rejected one unifying principles in favour of three basic components of nature: matter (substance), force (energy), and spirit (soul). 'Spirit' is said to be what we now mean by essentialism - what is irreducibly peculiar to the object. | |
| From: report of Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870]) by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Making' |
| 17399 | Elements don't survive in compounds, but the 'substance' of the element does [Mendeleev] |
| Full Idea: Neither mercury as a metal nor oxygen as a gas is contained in mercury oxide; it only contains the substance of the elements, just as steam only contains the substance of ice. | |
| From: Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870], I:23), quoted by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Nature' | |
| A reaction: [1889 edn] Scerri glosses the word 'substance' as meaning essence. |
| 17400 | Mendeleev focused on abstract elements, not simple substances, so he got to their essence [Mendeleev, by Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Because he was attempting to classify abstract elements, not simple substances, Mendeleev was not misled by nonessential chemical properties. | |
| From: report of Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870]) by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Making' | |
| A reaction: I'm not fully clear about this, but I take it that Mendeleev stood back from the messy observations, and tried to see the underlying simpler principles. 'Simple substances' were ones that had not so far been decomposed. |
| 17401 | Mendeleev had a view of elements which allowed him to overlook some conflicting observations [Mendeleev] |
| Full Idea: His view of elements allowed Mendeleev to maintain the validity of the periodic table even in instances where observational evidence seemed to point against it. | |
| From: Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870]), quoted by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Making' | |
| A reaction: Mendeleev seems to have focused on abstract essences of elements, rather than on the simplest substances they had so far managed to isolate. |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |
| Full Idea: The Egyptians were the first to claim that the soul of a human being is immortal, and that each time the body dies the soul enters another creature just as it is being born. | |
| From: Herodotus (The Histories [c.435 BCE], 2.123.2) |