5 ideas
| 10242 | I apply structuralism to concrete and abstract objects indiscriminately [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My own line is a yet more sweeping structuralism (than David Lewis's account of classes), applying to concrete and abstract objects indiscriminately. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Structure and Nature [1992], p.6), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.9 | |
| A reaction: Shapiro calls this 'breathtaking', and retreats from it, but it is something like my own view, starting from Mill's pebbles and working up. |
| 10243 | My ontology is quarks etc., classes of such things, classes of such classes etc. [Quine] |
| Full Idea: My tentative ontology continues to consist of quarks and their compounds, also classes of such things, classes of such classes, and so on. | |
| From: Willard Quine (Structure and Nature [1992], p.9), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics 4.9 | |
| A reaction: I would call this the Hierarchy of Abstraction (just coined it - what do you think?). Unlike Quine, I don't see why its ontology should include things called 'sets' in addition to the things that make them up. |
| 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 |
| 19384 | Space and time are the order of all possibilities, and don't just relate to what is actual [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Space and time taken together constitute the order of possibilities of the one entire universe, so that these orders relate not only to what actually is, but also to anything that could be put in its place. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Reply to 'Rorarius' 2nd ed [1702], GP iv 568), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Space and Time' | |
| A reaction: A very nice idea. Rather like the 'space of reasons', where all rational thought must exist, space and time are the 'space of existence and action'. Their concepts involve more than relations between what actually exists. |
| 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. |