Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Letters' and 'History of Ancient Art'

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4 ideas

15. Nature of Minds / A. Nature of Mind / 1. Mind / d. Location of mind

5987	Alcmaeon was the first to say the brain is central to thinking [Alcmaeon, by Staden, von]
	Full Idea: Alcmaeon apparently was the first Greek to assign central cognitive and biological functions to the brain.
	From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE]) by Heinrich von Staden - Alcmaeon
	A reaction: The name of Alcmaeon should be remembered with honour. This was 200 years before Aristotle, who still hadn't worked it out. I presume Alcmaeon inferred the truth from head injuries, which is overwhelming evidence, if you notice it.

19. Language / E. Analyticity / 4. Analytic/Synthetic Critique

21338	I will even consider changing a meaning to save a law; I question the meaning-fact cleavage [Quine]
	Full Idea: I am not concerned even to avoid the trivial extreme of sustaining a law by changing a meaning; for the cleavage between meaning and fact is part of what ...I am questioning.
	From: Willard Quine (Letters [1962], 1962.06.01)
	A reaction: [Letter to Adolf Grünbaum. Found on Twitter] A strikingly helpful expression of his position by Quine. We should take about the 'meaning/fact distinction' in order to understand clearly what is going on here.

21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 4. Art as Expression

8119	Art aims only at beauty, of form, of idea, and (above all) of expression [Winckelmann, by Tolstoy]
	Full Idea: According to Winckelmann, the law and aim of all art is beauty, independent of goodness. The three kinds of beauty are of form, of idea, and of expression (the highest aim, attainable only when the other two are present).
	From: report of Johann Winckelmann (History of Ancient Art [1764]) by Leo Tolstoy - What is Art? Ch.3
	A reaction: This sounds very like 'art for art's sake', but a hundred years earlier. This is quite a good distinction, and I particularly like the 'beauty of idea', which is often overlooked.

29. Religion / D. Religious Issues / 2. Immortality / b. Soul

24043	Soul must be immortal, since it continually moves, like the heavens [Alcmaeon, by Aristotle]
	Full Idea: Alcmaeon says that the soul is immortal because it resembles immortal things and that this affection belongs to it because it is always in movement, like divine things, such the moon, the sun, the stars and the whole heaven.
	From: report of Alcmaeon (fragments/reports [c.490 BCE], DK 24) by Aristotle - De Anima 405a30
	A reaction: Hm. Fish and rivers seem to be continually moving too. Presumably we are like gods, but then Greek gods seem awfully like humans. I don't know the history of belief in immortality; an interesting topic.