display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 14799 | Metaphysics rests on observations, but ones so common we hardly notice them [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: Metaphysics really rests on observations, whether consciously or not. The only reason this is not recognised is that it rests upon kinds of phenomena with which every man's experience is so saturated that he pays no particular attention to them. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Approach to Metaphysics [1898], p.311) | |
| A reaction: I think this is entirely right. I would say that the only thing that distinguishes metaphysical thought is its extreme level of generality, which makes it very hard to substantiate, because it is so remote from its evidential base. |
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
| Full Idea: Hobbes took his method from Galileo, of resolving any complex situation into its logically primitive, simple elements and then using the simple elements to show how the complex situation could be reconstructed. | |
| From: report of Thomas Hobbes (Leviathan [1651]) by Alasdair MacIntyre - A Short History of Ethics Ch.10 | |
| A reaction: Reverse engineering of reality. This idea, wherever it comes from, strikes me as the key to the advance of human understanding. No one has yet improved on it as a method, in science or philosophy. Reconstruction needs the mechanism. |