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Full Idea
Crucial to the scientific method is the ability to abstract out the subjective qualities that we give to things - such as beauty, meaning, purpose, and value - and focus only on the objective qualities of things, which can be measured and quantified.
Gist of Idea
Science has to abstract out the subjective attributes of things, focusing on what is objective
Source
Kevin Aho (Existentialism: an introduction [2014], 1 'Emergence')
Book Ref
Aho,Kevin: 'Existentialism: an introduction' [Polity 2014], p.5
A Reaction
This seems to me exactly right. People who deny the primary/secondary distinction, like Hume, are usually correspondingly pessimistic about science. And Hume was wrong about that.
Related Idea
Idea 5466 Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass [Ellis]
| 20734 | Anxiety, nausea, guilt and absurdity shake us up, revealing our freedom and limits [Aho] |
| 20733 | Our 'existence' is how we create ourselves, unconstrained by any prior 'essence' [Aho] |
| 20736 | Science has to abstract out the subjective attributes of things, focusing on what is objective [Aho] |
| 20738 | Social contracts and markets have made society seem disconnected and artificial [Aho] |
| 20737 | Protestantism brought the modern emphasis on inner states of the soul [Aho] |
| 20744 | Phenomenologists say all experience is about something and is directed [Aho] |
| 20753 | The self is constituted by its choices made within a social context [Aho] |
| 20766 | Four Noble Truths: life is suffering, caused by attachment, it is avoidable, there is a path [Aho] |