display all the ideas for this combination of texts
8 ideas
| 225 | The unlimited has no shape and is endless [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The unlimited partakes neither of the round nor of the straight, because it has no ends nor edges. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 137e) |
| 233 | Some things do not partake of the One [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The others cannot partake of the one in any way; they can neither partake of it nor of the whole. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 159d) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 231 |
| 2062 | The only movement possible for the One is in space or in alteration [Plato] |
| Full Idea: If the One moves it either moves spatially or it is altered, since these are the only motions. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 138b) |
| 231 | Everything partakes of the One in some way [Plato] |
| Full Idea: The others are not altogether deprived of the one, for they partake of it in some way. | |
| From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 157c) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 233. |
| 7563 | The old 'influx' view of causation says it is a flow of accidental properties from A to B [Suárez, by Jolley] |
| Full Idea: The 'influx' model of causation says that causes involve a process of contagion, as it were; when the kettle boils, the gas infects the water inside the kettle with its own 'individual accident' of heat, which literally flows from one to the other. | |
| From: report of Francisco Suárez (works [1588]) by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: This nicely captures the scholastic target of Hume's sceptical thinking on the subject. However, see Idea 2542, where the idea of influx has had a revival. It is hard to see how the water could change if it didn't 'catch' something from the gas. |
| 14175 | We can drop 'cause', and just make inferences between facts [Russell] |
| Full Idea: On the whole it is not worthwhile preserving the word 'cause': it is enough to say, what is far less misleading, that any two configurations allow us to infer any other. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §460) | |
| A reaction: Russell spelled this out fully in a 1912 paper. This sounds like David Hume, but he prefers to talk of 'habit' rather than 'inference', which might contain a sneaky necessity. |
| 14172 | Moments and points seem to imply other moments and points, but don't cause them [Russell] |
| Full Idea: Some people would hold that two moments of time, or two points of space, imply each other's existence; yet the relation between these cannot be said to be causal. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §449) | |
| A reaction: Famously, Russell utterly rejected causation a few years after this. The example seems clearer if you say that two points or moments can imply at least one point or instant between them, without causing them. |
| 14174 | The laws of motion and gravitation are just parts of the definition of a kind of matter [Russell] |
| Full Idea: For us, as pure mathematicians, the laws of motion and the law of gravitation are not properly laws at all, but parts of the definition of a certain kind of matter. | |
| From: Bertrand Russell (The Principles of Mathematics [1903], §459) | |
| A reaction: The 'certain kind of matter' is that which has 'mass'. Since these are paradigm cases of supposed laws, this is the beginning of the end for real laws of nature, and good riddance say I. See Mumford on this. |