display all the ideas for this combination of texts
2 ideas
| 454 | If there are many things they must have a finite number, but there must be endless things between them [Zeno of Elea] |
| Full Idea: It things are many, they can't be more or less than they are, so they must be finite, but also there must be endless things between each thing, so they must be infinite. | |
| From: Zeno (Elea) (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE], B3), quoted by Simplicius - On Aristotle's 'Physics' 140.29 |
| 2280 | Many causes are quite baffling, so it is absurd to deduce causes from final purposes [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: God can make unnumerable things whose cause escapes me, and for this reason alone the entire class of causes which people customarily derive from a thing's "end", I judge to be utterly useless in physics. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], §4.55) | |
| A reaction: anti-Aristotle |