6 ideas
| 16639 | Only individual bodies exist [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Nothing truly exists in nature beyond individual bodies. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620]), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 182 | |
| A reaction: [Unusually, Pasnau gives no reference in the text; possibly II:1-2] What this leaves out, from even an auster nominalist ontology, is undifferentiated stuff like water. Even electrons don't seem quite distinct from one another. |
| 16033 | There are only individual bodies containing law-based powers, and the Forms are these laws [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Though nothing exists in nature except individual bodies which exhibit pure individual acts [powers] in accordance with law…It is this law and its clauses which we understand by the term Forms. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620], p.103), quoted by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §3 | |
| A reaction: This isn't far off what Aristotle had in mind, when he talks of forms as being 'principles', though there is more emphasis on mechanisms in the original idea. Note that Bacon takes laws so literally that he refers to their 'clauses'. |
| 13166 | Essences are no use in mathematics, if all mathematical truths are necessary [Mancosu] |
| Full Idea: Essences and essential properties do not seem to be useful in mathematical contexts, since all mathematical truths are regarded as necessary (though Kit Fine distinguishes between essential and necessary properties). | |
| From: Paolo Mancosu (Explanation in Mathematics [2008], §6.1) | |
| A reaction: I take the proviso in brackets to be crucial. This represents a distortion of notion of an essence. There is a world of difference between the central facts about the nature of a square and the peripheral inferences derivable from it. |
| 21950 | Science must clear away the idols of the mind if they are ever going to find the truth [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: We must clear away the idols and false notions which are now in possession of the human understanding, and have taken deep root therein, and so beset men's minds that truth can hardly find an entrance. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The New Organon [1620], 38), quoted by Mark Wrathall - Heidegger: how to read 2 | |
| A reaction: [He goes on to list the types of idol] |
| 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. |