display all the ideas for this combination of texts
9 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. |
| 13605 | Gravity isn't a force, because it produces effects without diminishing [Mayer] |
| Full Idea: If gravity be called a force, a cause is supposed which produces effects without itself diminishing, and incorrect conceptions of the causal connexions of things are thereby fostered. | |
| From: J.R. Mayer (Remarks on the forces of inorganic Nature [1842], p.199), quoted by Brian Ellis - Scientific Essentialism 8.03 | |
| A reaction: This seems like a brilliant prelude to the proposal that gravity is actually the 'curvature' of space (whatever that is!). |
| 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. |
| 1526 | Almost everyone except Plato thinks that time could not have been generated [Plato, by Aristotle] |
| Full Idea: With a single exception (Plato) everyone agrees about time - that it is not generated. Democritus says time is an obvious example of something not generated. | |
| From: report of Plato (works [c.375 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 251b14 |
| 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. |
| 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'. |