4 ideas
23123 | Basic to human culture are binary oppositions, such as eating raw or cooked [Levi-Strauss, by Green,TH] |
Full Idea: Lévi-Strauss made canonic to French structuralism the idea that human culture could be understood through a series of binary oppositionsn - the difference between what could be eaten raw and what cooked being one of the most fundamental. | |
From: report of Claude Lévi-Strauss (works [1950]) by T.H. Green - Prolegomena to Ethics 1 | |
A reaction: My guess is that such oppositions can often be illuminating, but will always be eventually judged as too simplistic. |
23222 | A soul with physical extension is more likely than an immaterial soul that moves bodies [Elizabeth] |
Full Idea: I would find it easier to concede matter and extension to the soul than to concede that an immaterial thing could move and be moved by a body. | |
From: Elizabeth, Princess of Bohemia (Letters to Descartes [1643], p.42), quoted by Matthew Cobb - The Idea of the Brain 2 | |
A reaction: Very nicely expressed! I'm trying to imagine a ghost which finds itself stuck with a physical body which it has to drag around like a reluctant dog. She is stating the classic interaction problem which plagues all mind-body dualism. |
1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
Full Idea: Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Diogenes Laertius - Lives of Eminent Philosophers 02.Ar.3 |
5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
Full Idea: Archelaus wrote that life on Earth began in a primeval slime. | |
From: report of Archelaus (fragments/reports [c.450 BCE]) by Malcolm Schofield - Archelaus | |
A reaction: This sounds like a fairly clearcut assertion of the production of life by evolution. Darwin's contribution was to propose the mechanism for achieving it. We should honour the name of Archelaus for this idea. |