5 ideas
| 21686 | Sense-data are dubious abstractions, with none of the plausibility of tables [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The notion of pure sense datum is a pretty tenuous abstraction, a good deal more conjectural than the notion of an external object, a table or a sheep. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Mental Entities [1952], p.225) | |
| A reaction: This seems to sum up the view of sense-data held by the generation after Russell and Moore. Ayer still talks about them, but Russell had already given them up. The simple challenge is - what is the evidence for their existence? Cf innate ideas. |
| 21685 | Empiricism says evidence rests on the senses, but that insight is derived from science [Quine] |
| Full Idea: The crucial insight of empiricism is that any evidence for science has its end points in the senses. This insight remains valid, but it is an insight which comes after physics, physiology, and psychology, not before. | |
| From: Willard Quine (On Mental Entities [1952], p.225) | |
| A reaction: Interesting. I think Hume and co. were probably outlining essential presuppositions and contraints which must be accepted by science. Quine offers empiricism as more like a description of science (with success as its authority?). |
| 4422 | The end need not be the goal, as in the playing of a melody (and yet it must be completed) [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Not every end is the goal; the end of a melody is not its goal; and yet: as long as the melody has not reached its end, it also hasn't reached its goal. A parable. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (The Wanderer and his Shadow [1880], §204) | |
| A reaction: A nice message for Aristotle, that there is no simple separation of ends and means. |
| 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. |