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3 ideas
458 | Nothing could come out of nothing, and existence could never completely cease [Empedocles] |
Full Idea: From what in no wise exists, it is impossible for anything to come into being; for Being to perish completely is incapable of fulfilment and unthinkable. | |
From: Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE], B012), quoted by Anon (Lyc) - On Melissus 975b1-4 |
5112 | Empedocles says things are at rest, unless love unites them, or hatred splits them [Empedocles, by Aristotle] |
Full Idea: Empedocles claims that things are alternately changing and at rest - that they are changing whenever love is creating a unity out of plurality, or hatred is creating plurality out of unity, and they are at rest in the times in between. | |
From: report of Empedocles (fragments/reports [c.453 BCE]) by Aristotle - Physics 250b26 | |
A reaction: I suppose one must say that this an example of Ruskin's 'pathetic fallacy' - reading human emotions into the cosmos. Being constructive little creatures, we think goodness leads to construction. I'm afraid Empedocles is just wrong. |
23855 | Creation produced a network or web of determinations [Weil] |
Full Idea: What is sovereign in this world is determinateness, limit. Eternal Wisdom imprisons this universe in a network, a web of determinations. | |
From: Simone Weil (The Need for Roots [1943], III 'Growth') | |
A reaction: Love this, because I take 'determination' to be the defining relationship in ontology. It covers both physical causation and abstract necessities. |