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2 ideas
| 16631 | If we remove surface qualities from wax, we have an extended, flexible, changeable thing [Descartes] |
| Full Idea: After taking away what does not belong to the wax, let us see what is left: surely, it is nothing other than a thing that is extended, flexible and changeable. | |
| From: René Descartes (Meditations [1641], (VII:30-1)), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 08.2 | |
| A reaction: Aristotle worried about nothing being left when you 'stripped' an object, so this could be seen as a positive contribution to scholastic philosophy. Why is the substrate 'flexible'? He talks elsewhere of taking the clothes off the wax and seeing it naked. |
| 10919 | What prevents a stone from being divided into parts which are still the stone? [Duns Scotus] |
| Full Idea: What is it in this stone, by which ...it is absolutely incompatible with the stone for it to be divided into several parts each of which is this stone, the kind of division that is proper to a universal whole as divided into its subjective parts? | |
| From: John Duns Scotus (Ordinatio [1302], II d3 p1 q2 n48) | |
| A reaction: This is the origin of the concept of haecceity, when Scotus wants to know what exactly individuates each separate entity. He may have been mistaken in thinking that such a question has an answer. |