display all the ideas for this combination of texts
10 ideas
| 12484 | Motion is just change of distance between two things [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Motion is nothing but change of distance between two things. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.13.14) | |
| A reaction: If a thing moved steadily relative to other objects, and we then removed all other objects in the universe, would it still be moving? |
| 15986 | Boyle and Locke suspect forces of being occult [Locke, by Alexander,P] |
| Full Idea: I believe that both Boyle and Locke were suspicious of forces, regarding them as occult. | |
| From: report of John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 7 | |
| A reaction: I take this to be key difference between these two and Leibniz, with the latter on the side of the angels. |
| 16685 | An insurmountable force in a body keeps our hands apart when we handle it [Locke] |
| Full Idea: The bodies which we daily handle make us perceive that they do by an insurmountable force hinder the approach of the parts of our hands that press them. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.04.01) | |
| A reaction: This is interesting for a rare use of the word 'force' by Locke. I like the empiricist approach to these things, of actually contemplating handling physical objects. Empiricism keeps the feet of philosophy firmly on the ground. |
| 15980 | We can locate the parts of the universe, but not the whole thing [Locke] |
| Full Idea: We have no idea of the place of the universe, though we can of all the parts of it. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.13.10) | |
| A reaction: Locke evidently agrees with the Leibniz view of space as relative, rather than with Newton's absolute view. …But see Idea 15981. |
| 20819 | The past and the future subsist, but only the present exists [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: When he wished to be subtle, Chrysippus wrote that the past part of time and the future part do not exist but subsist, and only the present exists. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081f | |
| A reaction: [from lost On Void] I think I prefer the ontology of Idea 20818. Idea 20819 does not offer an epistemology. Is the present substantial enough to be known? The word 'subsist' is an ontological evasion (even though Russell briefly relied on it). |
| 12486 | An 'instant' is where we perceive no succession, and is the time of a single idea [Locke] |
| Full Idea: A part of duration wherein we perceive no succession, is that which we may call an 'instant'; and is that which takes up the time of only one idea in our minds. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.14.10) | |
| A reaction: Given that the present appears to have zero duration (if it is where past and future meet), then this strikes me as a pretty accurate account of what we mean by an instant. |
| 12487 | We can never show that two successive periods of time were equal [Locke] |
| Full Idea: Two successive lengths of duration, however measured, can never be demonstrated to be equal. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 2.14.21) | |
| A reaction: Nice thought. You can't lay the durations next to one another, the way you can lengths. You can only count the clock ticks, but not be sure whether their speed remained constant. |
| 20818 | The present does not exist, so our immediate experience is actually part past and part future [Chrysippus, by Plutarch] |
| Full Idea: Stoics do not allow a minimal time to exist, and do not want to have a partless 'now'; so what one thinks one has grasped as present is in part future and in part past. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by Plutarch - On Common Conceptions 1081c | |
| A reaction: [from lost On Parts Bk3-5] I agree with the ontology here, but I take our grasp of the present to be very short-term memory of the past. I ignore special relativity. Chrysippus expressed two views about this; in the other one he was a Presentist. |
| 20821 | Time is continous and infinitely divisible, so there cannot be a wholly present time [Chrysippus, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Chrysippus says most clearly that no time is wholly present; for since the divisibility of continuous things is infinite, time as a whole is also subject to infinite divisibility by this method of division. | |
| From: report of Chrysippus (fragments/reports [c.240 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: But what is his reason for thinking that time is a continuous thing? There is a minimum time in quantum mechanics (the Planck Time), but do these quantum intervals overlap? Compare Idea 20819. |
| 12567 | It is inconceivable that unthinking matter could produce intelligence [Locke] |
| Full Idea: It is as impossible to conceive that ever bare incogitative matter should produce a thinking intelligent being, as that nothing should of itself produce matter. | |
| From: John Locke (Essay Conc Human Understanding (2nd Ed) [1694], 4.10.10) | |
| A reaction: This is still a strongly intuitive objection that some people have to materialistic evolution. If you don't think the mind can be reduced to the physical, you still have this problem. You'll probably have to concoct an idea called 'emergence'. |