Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Space, Time and Deity (2 vols)' and 'Letters to Varignon'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     specify just one area for these texts

---

4 ideas

17. Mind and Body / A. Mind-Body Dualism / 6. Epiphenomenalism

14494	Epiphenomenalism is like a pointless nobleman, kept for show, but soon to be abolished [Alexander,S]
	Full Idea: Epiphenomenalism supposes something to exist in nature which has nothing to do, no purpose to serve, a species of noblesse which depends on the work of its inferiors, but is kept for show and might as well, and undoubtedly would in time be abolished.
	From: Samuel Alexander (Space, Time and Deity (2 vols) [1927], 2:8), quoted by Jaegwon Kim - Nonreductivist troubles with ment.causation IV
	A reaction: Wonderful! Kim quotes this, and labels the implicit slogan (to be real is to have causal powers) 'Alexander's Dictum'. All the examples given of epiphenomena are only causally inert within a defined system, but they act causally outside the system.

26. Natural Theory / A. Speculations on Nature / 5. Infinite in Nature

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

27. Natural Reality / G. Biology / 3. Evolution

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.

19414	Men are related to animals, which are related to plants, then to fossils, and then to the apparently inert [Leibniz]
	Full Idea: Men are related to animals, these to plants, and the latter directly to fossils which will be linked in their turn to bodies which the senses and the imagination represent to us as perfectly dead and formless.
	From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Varignon [1702], 1702)
	A reaction: Leibniz would be a bit surprised to find the way in which this has turned out to be largely true, since he is basing it on his picture of a hierarchy of monads. Nevertheless, the idea that we are all related wasn't invented in 1859.