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3 ideas
5453 | Essentialists mostly accept the primary/secondary qualities distinction [Ellis] |
Full Idea: Essentialists mostly accept the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, ..where the primary qualities of things are those that are intrinsic to the objects that have them. | |
From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.3) | |
A reaction: One reason I favour essentialism is because I have always thought that the primary/secondary distinction was a key to understanding the world. 'Primary' gets at the ontology, 'secondary' shows us the epistemology. |
5466 | Primary qualities are number, figure, size, texture, motion, configuration, impenetrability and (?) mass [Ellis] |
Full Idea: For Boyle, Locke and Newton, the qualities inherent in bodies were just the primary qualities, namely number, figure, size, texture, motion and configuration of parts, impenetrability and, perhaps, body (or mass). | |
From: Brian Ellis (The Philosophy of Nature: new essentialism [2002], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: It is nice to have a list. Ellis goes on to say these are too passive, and urges dispositions as primary. Even so, the original seventeenth century insight seems to me a brilliant step forward in our understanding of the world. |
4303 | The notion of substance lies at the heart of rationalist metaphysics [Cottingham] |
Full Idea: The notion of substance lies at the heart of rationalist metaphysics. | |
From: John Cottingham (The Rationalists [1988], p.75) | |
A reaction: The idea of 'substance' has had an interesting revival in modern philosophy (though not, obviously, in physics). Maybe physics and philosophy have views of reality which are not complementary, but are rivals. |