display all the ideas for this combination of texts
5 ideas
| 617 | It is hard to see how either time or movement could come into existence or be destroyed [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: It is impossible that movement should either come-to-be or be destroyed. The same can be said for time itself, since it is not even possible for there to be an earlier and a later if time does not exist. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1071b06) |
| 619 | Something which both moves and is moved is intermediate, so it follows that there must be an unmoved mover [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Since that which is moved and which also moves is an intermediate, it follows that there must be something that moves without being moved. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072a19) |
| 613 | Even if the world is caused by fate, mind and nature are still prior causes [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Even if luck or the automatic are the cause of the world, mind and nature are prior causes still. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1065b03) |
| 620 | The first mover is necessary, and because it is necessary it is good [Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: The existence of the first mover is necessary, and in that it is necessary it is good. | |
| From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1072b10) | |
| A reaction: This is the direct antithesis of David Hume's is/ought distinction (that the universe is value-free). |
| 6938 | Natural selection might well fill an animal's mind with pleasing thoughts rather than true ones [Peirce] |
| Full Idea: It is probably of more advantage to an animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought. | |
| From: Charles Sanders Peirce (The Fixation of Belief [1877], p. 8) | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a pragmatist saying that a set of beliefs might work fine but be untrue. So Peirce does not have the highly relativistic notion of truth of some later pragmatists. Good for him. Note the early date to be thinking about Darwin. |