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2 ideas
221 | Absolute ideas, such as the Good and the Beautiful, cannot be known by us [Plato] |
Full Idea: The absolute good and the beautiful and all which we conceive to be absolute ideas are unknown to us. | |
From: Plato (Parmenides [c.364 BCE], 134c) | |
A reaction: These seems to thoroughly pre-empt Plato's Theory of Forms a century before he created it. Which shows (as Simone Weil says) that Plato was just part of a long tradition. |
6780 | Anti-realism is more plausible about laws than about entities and theories [Bird] |
Full Idea: There is anti-realism with regard to unobservable entities and the theories that purport to mention them, but the more plausible version attaches to theories concerning what laws of nature are. | |
From: Alexander Bird (Philosophy of Science [1998], Ch.4) | |
A reaction: This sounds right. I certainly find anti-realism about the entities of science utterly implausible. I also doubt whether there is any such thing as a law, above and beyond the behaviour of matter. Theories float between the two. |