4 ideas
| 3648 | Empiricists are collecting ants; rationalists are spinning spiders; and bees do both [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Empiricists are like ants; they collect and put to use; but rationalists, like spiders, spin threads out of themselves. (…and bees follow the middle way, of collecting material and transforming it). | |
| From: Francis Bacon (Cogitata et Visa [1607]) | |
| A reaction: Nice (and so concisely expressed). Bees seem to be just more intelligent and energetic empiricists. |
| 9382 | Subjects may be unaware of their epistemic 'entitlements', unlike their 'justifications' [Burge] |
| Full Idea: I call 'entitlement' (as opposed to justification) the epistemic rights or warrants that need not be understood by or even be accessible to the subject. | |
| From: Tyler Burge (Content Preservation [1993]), quoted by Paul Boghossian - Analyticity Reconsidered §III | |
| A reaction: I espouse a coherentism that has both internal and external components, and is mediated socially. In Burge's sense, animals will sometimes have 'entitlement'. I prefer, though, not to call this 'knowledge'. 'Entitled true belief' is good. |
| 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. |