53 ideas
| 7490 | Because of Darwin, wisdom as a definite attainable state has faded [Watson] |
| 7461 | The three key ideas are the soul, Europe, and the experiment [Watson] |
| 7464 | The big idea: imitation, the soul, experiments, God, heliocentric universe, evolution? [Watson] |
| 13939 | No possible evidence could decide the reality of numbers, so it is a pseudo-question [Carnap] |
| 16252 | Metaphysics uses empty words, or just produces pseudo-statements [Carnap] |
| 7465 | Babylonian thinking used analogy, rather than deduction or induction [Watson] |
| 13342 | Carnap defined consequence by contradiction, but this is unintuitive and changes with substitution [Tarski on Carnap] |
| 13251 | Each person is free to build their own logic, just by specifying a syntax [Carnap] |
| 7466 | Mesopotamian numbers applied to specific things, and then became abstract [Watson] |
| 13936 | Questions about numbers are answered by analysis, and are analytic, and hence logically true [Carnap] |
| 8748 | Logical positivists incorporated geometry into logicism, saying axioms are just definitions [Carnap, by Shapiro] |
| 8960 | Internal questions about abstractions are trivial, and external ones deeply problematic [Carnap, by Szabó] |
| 13933 | Existence questions are 'internal' (within a framework) or 'external' (concerning the whole framework) [Carnap] |
| 13934 | To be 'real' is to be an element of a system, so we cannot ask reality questions about the system itself [Carnap] |
| 13938 | A linguistic framework involves commitment to entities, so only commitment to the framework is in question [Carnap] |
| 13935 | We only accept 'things' within a language with formation, testing and acceptance rules [Carnap] |
| 14305 | In the truth-functional account a burnt-up match was soluble because it never entered water [Carnap] |
| 13932 | Empiricists tend to reject abstract entities, and to feel sympathy with nominalism [Carnap] |
| 13937 | New linguistic claims about entities are not true or false, but just expedient, fruitful or successful [Carnap] |
| 18699 | Carnap tried to define all scientific predicates in terms of primitive relations, using type theory [Carnap, by Button] |
| 13940 | All linguistic forms in science are merely judged by their efficiency as instruments [Carnap] |
| 13048 | Good explications are exact, fruitful, simple and similar to the explicandum [Carnap, by Salmon] |
| 20657 | There are 23 core brain functions, with known circuit, transmitters, genes and behaviour [Watson] |
| 20656 | Traditional ideas of the mind were weakened in the 1950s by mind-influencing drugs [Watson] |
| 12131 | All concepts can be derived from a few basics, making possible one science of everything [Carnap, by Brody] |
| 11968 | The intension of a sentence is the set of all possible worlds in which it is true [Carnap, by Kaplan] |
| 18285 | All translation loses some content (but language does not create reality) [Carnap] |
| 20655 | Humans have been hunter-gatherers for 99.5% of their existence [Watson] |
| 7477 | Modern democracy is actually elective oligarchy [Watson] |
| 7478 | Greek philosophers invented the concept of 'nature' as their special subject [Watson] |
| 20650 | The Uncertainty Principle implies that cause and effect can't be measured [Watson] |
| 20649 | The interference of light through two slits confirmed that it is waves [Watson] |
| 20661 | Electrons rotate in hyrogen atoms 10^13 times per second [Watson] |
| 20647 | Quantum theory explains why nature is made up of units, such as elements [Watson] |
| 20654 | Only four particles are needed for matter: up and down quark, electron, electron-neutrino [Watson] |
| 20651 | The shape of molecules is important, as well as the atoms and their bonds [Watson] |
| 20652 | In 1828 the animal substance urea was manufactured from inorganic ingredients [Watson] |
| 20658 | Information is physical, and living can be seen as replicating and preserving information [Watson] |
| 7462 | DNA mutation suggests humans and chimpanzees diverged 6.6 million years ago [Watson] |
| 7470 | During the rise of civilizations, the main gods changed from female to male [Watson] |
| 7474 | Hinduism has no founder, or prophet, or creed, or ecclesiastical structure [Watson] |
| 7479 | Modern Judaism became stabilised in 200 CE [Watson] |
| 7481 | The Israelites may have asserted the uniqueness of Yahweh to justify land claims [Watson] |
| 7480 | Monotheism was a uniquely Israelite creation within the Middle East [Watson] |
| 7471 | The Gathas (hymns) of Zoroastrianism date from about 1000 BCE [Watson] |
| 7473 | Zoroaster conceived the afterlife, judgement, heaven and hell, and the devil [Watson] |
| 7484 | Jesus never intended to start a new religion [Watson] |
| 7483 | Paul's early writings mention few striking episodes from Jesus' life [Watson] |
| 7475 | Confucius revered the spiritual world, but not the supernatural, or a personal god, or the afterlife [Watson] |
| 7476 | Taoism aims at freedom from the world, the body, the mind, and nature [Watson] |
| 7463 | The three basic ingredients of religion are: the soul, seers or priests, and ritual [Watson] |
| 7468 | In ancient Athens the souls of the dead are received by the 'upper air' [Watson] |
| 1513 | The Egyptians were the first to say the soul is immortal and reincarnated [Herodotus] |