7 ideas
| 21852 | Nomads are the basis of history, and yet almost unknowable [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There is no history from the viewpoint of nomads, although everything passes through them, to the point that they are like the noumena or the unknowable of history. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.107) | |
| A reaction: Nomads have the same place in society that indeterminate 'stuff' has in an object-orientated metaphysics. Deleuze seems to be romanticising nomads the way the late Victorians romanticised gypsies. |
| 4988 | Folk psychology may not be reducible, but that doesn't make it false [Kirk,R on Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: It may well be that completed neuroscience will not include a reduction of folk psychology, but why should that be a reason to regard it as false? It would only be a reason if irreducibility entailed that they could not possibly both be true. | |
| From: comment on Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981]) by Robert Kirk - Mind and Body §3.9 | |
| A reaction: If all our behaviour had been explained by a future neuro-science, this might not falsify folk psychology, but it would totally marginalise it. It is still possible that dewdrops are placed on leaves by fairies, but this is no longer a hot theory. |
| 4987 | Eliminative materialism says folk psychology will be replaced, not reduced [Churchland,PM] |
| Full Idea: Eliminative materialism says our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena is a radically false theory, so defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced (rather than reduced). | |
| From: Paul M. Churchland (Eliminative Materialism and Prop. Attitudes [1981], Intro) | |
| A reaction: It is hard to see what you could replace the idea of a 'belief' with in ordinary conversation. We may reduce beliefs to neuronal phenomena, but we can't drop the vocabulary of the macro-phenomena. The physics of weather doesn't eliminate 'storms'. |
| 21853 | We are currently extending capitalism to the whole of society [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: What characterises our situation is ….the extension of capitalism to the whole social body. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.110) | |
| A reaction: This is driven by the naïve people who think all problems can be solved by market forces, and that to everything that goes bankrupt we should just say 'good riddance'. |
| 21851 | The State requires self-preservation, but the war-machine desires destruction [Deleuze] |
| Full Idea: There will always be a tension between the State apparatus with its requirement for self-preservation, and the war-machine in its undertaking to destroy the State, to destroy the subjects of the State, and even to destroy itself. | |
| From: Gilles Deleuze (Many Politics [1977], p.106) | |
| A reaction: This seems to fit WWI quite well, but the desire of the war-machine to destroy the State which pays for it sounds unlikely. Nevertheless war is appalling for the state, but it is the whole point of the war-machine, which gets restless. |
| 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. |