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2 ideas
| 5090 | Maybe bodies are designed by accident, and the creatures that don't work are destroyed [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: Is it just an accident that teeth and other parts of the body seem to have some purpose, and creatures survive because they happen to be put together in a useful way? Everything else has been destroyed, as Empedocles says of his 'cow with human head'. | |
| From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], 61) by Aristotle - Physics 198b29 | |
| A reaction: Good grief! Has no one ever noticed that Empedocles proposed the theory of evolution? It isn't quite natural selection, because we aren't told what does the 'destroying', but it is a little flash of genius that was quietly forgotten. |
| 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'. |