display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 8660 | There are potential infinities (never running out), but actual infinity is incoherent [Aristotle, by Friend] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle developed his own distinction between potential infinity (never running out) and actual infinity (there being a collection of an actual infinite number of things, such as places, times, objects). He decided that actual infinity was incoherent. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by Michèle Friend - Introducing the Philosophy of Mathematics 1.3 | |
| A reaction: Friend argues, plausibly, that this won't do, since potential infinity doesn't make much sense if there is not an actual infinity of things to supply the demand. It seems to just illustrate how boggling and uncongenial infinity was to Aristotle. |
| 12058 | Aristotle's matter can become any other kind of matter [Aristotle, by Wiggins] |
| Full Idea: Aristotle's conception of matter permits any kind of matter to become any other kind of matter. | |
| From: report of Aristotle (works [c.330 BCE]) by David Wiggins - Substance 4.11.2 | |
| A reaction: This is obviously crucial background information when we read Aristotle on matter. Our 92+ elements, and fixed fundamental particles, gives a quite different picture. Aristotle would discuss form and matter quite differently now. |
| 11856 | Qualities should be predictable from the nature of the subject [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Whenever we find some quality in a subject, we ought to believe that if we understood the nature of both the subject and the quality we would conceive how the quality could arise from it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], Pref 66) | |
| A reaction: This is the idea that powers are prior to properties, which seems right to me. I take essence to be something like the best explanation of qualities. |
| 12994 | Gold has a real essence, unknown to us, which produces its properties [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The complex idea of gold includes its being something which has a real essence whose detailed constitution is unknown to us, except for the fact that such qualities as malleability depend upon it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 3.10) | |
| A reaction: This is precisely the view of modern scientific essentialism. The underlying idea I take to be the conception of essence as the thing which explains the properties. |
| 12808 | Part of our idea of gold is its real essence, which is not known to us in detail [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is very true that it is part of the complex idea of gold that it is a thing which has a real essence, the constitution of which is not otherwise known to us in detail. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (New Essays on Human Understanding [1704], 6.6.345), quoted by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz and Locke on Essences p.201 | |
| A reaction: See also Idea 12807. This is the clearest possible statement of Leibniz's clear-cut scientific essentialism, here presented in opposition to Locke (thought I take the latter to be only bothered by our inability to know the hidden constitution). |