display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 22170 | Senses grasp external properties, but the understanding grasps the essential natures of things [Aquinas] |
| Full Idea: Our imagination and senses grasp only the outer properties of things, not their natures. ...Understanding, however, grasps the very substance and nature of things, so that what is represented in understanding is a likeness of thing's very essence. | |
| From: Thomas Aquinas (Quodlibeta [1267], 8.2.2) | |
| A reaction: This is exactly the picture I endorse for modern science. Explanation is the path to understanding, and that must venture beyond immediate experience. |
| 22074 | We must show that the whole of nature, because it is effective, is grounded in freedom [Schelling] |
| Full Idea: What is required is to show that everything that is effective (nature, the world of things) is grounded in activity, life, freedom. | |
| From: Friedrich Schelling (Of Human Freedom [1809], p.351), quoted by Jean-François Courtine - Schelling | |
| A reaction: I take the ancestor of this view of nature to be the monads of Leibniz, as the active principle in nature. Because this is an idealist view, it starts with the absolute freedom of the Self, and presumably sees nature in its own image. |