25 ideas
| 12124 | Metaphysics is the best knowledge, because it is the simplest [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: That knowledge is worthiest which is charged with least multiplicity, which appeareth to be metaphysic | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
| A reaction: A surprising view, coming from the father of modern science, but essentially correct. Obviously metaphysics aspires to avoid multiplicity, but it is riddled not only with complexity in its researches, but massive uncertainties. |
| 12123 | Natural history supports physical knowledge, which supports metaphysical knowledge [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Knowledges are as pyramides, whereof history is the basis. So of natural philosophy, the basis is natural history, the stage next the basis is physic; the stage next the vertical point is metaphysic. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.6) | |
| A reaction: The father of modern science keeps a place for metaphysics, as the most abstract level above the physical sciences. I would say he is right. It leads to my own slogan: science is the servant of philosophy. |
| 12119 | Physics studies transitory matter; metaphysics what is abstracted and necessary [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Physic should contemplate that which is inherent in matter, and therefore transitory; and metaphysic that which is abstracted and fixed | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: He cites the ancients for this view, with which he agrees. One could do worse than hang onto metaphysics as the study of necessities, but must then face the attacks of the Quineans - that knowledge of necessities is beyond us. |
| 12120 | Physics is of material and efficient causes, metaphysics of formal and final causes [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: Physic inquireth and handleth the material and efficient causes; and metaphysic handleth the formal and final causes. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: Compare Idea 12119. This divides up Aristotle's famous Four Causes (or Explanations), outlined in 'Physics' II.3. The concept of 'matter', and the nature of 'cause' seem to me to fall with the purview of metaphysics. Interesting, though. |
| 19342 | Reason avoids multiplying hypotheses or principles [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Reason requires that we avoid multiplying hypotheses or principles, in somewhat the same way that the simplest system is always preferred in astronomy. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], 5) | |
| A reaction: He offers this principle without mentioning Ockham, as if it were self-evident. |
| 15201 | That Queen Anne is dead is a 'general fact', not a fact about Queen Anne [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: The fact that Queen Anne has been dead for some years is not, in the strict sense of 'about', a fact about Queen Anne; it is not a fact about anyone or anything - it is a general fact. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968], p.13), quoted by Robin Le Poidevin - Past, Present and Future of Debate about Tense 1 b | |
| A reaction: He distinguishes 'general facts' (states of affairs, I think) from 'individual facts', involving some specific object. General facts seem to be what are expressed by negative existential truths, such as 'there is no Loch Ness Monster'. Useful. |
| 12711 | The immediate cause of movements is more real [than geometry] [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The force or proximate cause of these changes [of position] is something more real, and there is sufficient basis to attribute it to one body more than to another. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §18), quoted by Daniel Garber - Leibniz:Body,Substance,Monad 3 | |
| A reaction: The force is said to be 'more real' than geometry. Leibniz seems to have embraced fairly physical powers in the period 1678-1698, and then seen them as more and more like spirits. |
| 19349 | The complete notion of a substance implies all of its predicates or attributes [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The nature of an individual substance or of a complete being is to have a notion so complete that it is sufficient to contain and to allow us to deduce from it all the predicates of the subject to which this notion is attributed. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: This is the unusual Leibnizian view of such things, which he takes to extremes. I think it depends on whether you are talking of predicates, or of real intrinsic properties. I don't see how what happens to a substance can be contained in the subject. |
| 7558 | Substances mirror God or the universe, each from its own viewpoint [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: Each substance is like a whole world, and like a mirror of God, or indeed of the whole universe, which each one expresses in its own fashion. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686]), quoted by Nicholas Jolley - Leibniz Intro | |
| A reaction: Leibniz isn't a pantheist, so he does not identify God with the universe, so it is a bit revealing that substance could reflect either one or the other, and he doesn't seem to care which. In the end, for all the sophistication, he just made it up. |
| 16761 | Forms are of no value in physics, but are indispensable in metaphysics [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The consideration of forms serves no purpose in the details of physics and must not be used to explain particular phenomena. …but their misuse must not lead us to reject something which is so useful to metaphysics. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], 10), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.5 | |
| A reaction: This is a key test for the question of whether metaphysics is separate from science (as Leibniz and Pasnau think), or whether there is a continuum. Is 'substantial form' an illuminating way to undestand modern physics? |
| 13088 | Subjects include predicates, so full understanding of subjects reveals all the predicates [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The subject-term must always include the predicate-term, in such a way that the man who understood the notion of the subject perfectly would also judge that the predicate belongs to it. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) | |
| A reaction: Sounds as if every sentence is analytic, but he doesn't mean that. He does, oddly, mean that if we fully understand the name 'Alexander', we understand his complete history, which is a bit silly, I'm afraid. Even God doesn't learn things just from names. |
| 13085 | Leibniz is some form of haecceitist [Leibniz, by Cover/O'Leary-Hawthorne] |
| Full Idea: Some form of haecceitism is central to the Leibnizian metaphysic. | |
| From: report of Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §8) by Cover,J/O'Leary-Hawthorne,J - Substance and Individuation in Leibniz 5.2.1 | |
| A reaction: That is, there is some inner hallmark that individuates each thing (though they don't mean the Duns Scotus idea of a haecceity which has no qualities apart from the capacity to individuate). Leibniz thinks essences individuate. |
| 12121 | We don't assume there is no land, because we can only see sea [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.5) | |
| A reaction: Just the sort of pithy remark for which Bacon is famous. It is an obvious point, but a nice corrective to anyone who wants to apply empirical principles in a rather gormless way. |
| 5024 | Knowledge doesn't just come from the senses; we know the self, substance, identity, being etc. [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is always false to say that all our notions come from the so-called external senses, for the notion I have of myself and of my thoughts, and consequently of being, substance, action, identity, and many others, come from an internal experience. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §27) | |
| A reaction: Of course, an empiricist like Hume would not deny this, as he bases his views on 'experience' (including anger, for example), not just 'sense experience'. But Hume, famously, said he has no experience of a Self, so can't get started on Leibniz's journey. |
| 12117 | Science moves up and down between inventions of causes, and experiments [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: All true and fruitful natural philosophy hath a double scale or ladder, ascendent and descendent, ascending from experiments to the invention of causes, and descending from causes to the invention of new experiments. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.1) | |
| A reaction: After several hundred years, I doubt whether anyone can come up with a better account of scientific method than Bacon's. |
| 12127 | Many different theories will fit the observed facts [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: The ordinary face and view of experience is many times satisfied by several theories and philosophies. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.5) | |
| A reaction: He gives as his example that the Copernican system and the Ptolemaic system both seem to satisfy all the facts. He wrote in 1605, just before Galileo's telescope. His point is regularly made in modern discussions. In this case, he was wrong! |
| 12126 | People love (unfortunately) extreme generality, rather than particular knowledge [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: It is the nature of the mind of man (to the extreme prejudice of knowledge) to delight in the spacious liberty of generalities, as in a champaign region, and not in the inclosures of particularity. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VIII.1) | |
| A reaction: I have to plead guilty to this myself. He may have pinpointed the key motivation behind philosophy. We all want to know things, as Aristotle said, but some of us want the broad brush, and others want the fine detail. |
| 5027 | If a person's memories became totally those of the King of China, he would be the King of China [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: If someone were suddenly to become the King of China, forgetting what he has been, as if born anew, is this not as if he were annihilated, and a King of China created in his place at the same moment? | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §34) | |
| A reaction: Strikingly, this clearly endorse the view of the empiricist Locke. It is a view about the continuity of the self, not its essence, but Descartes must have turned in his grave when he read this. When this 'King of China' introspects his self, what is it? |
| 5023 | Future contingent events are certain, because God foresees them, but that doesn't make them necessary [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: We must distinguish between what is certain and what is necessary; everyone agrees that future contingents are certain, since God foresees them, but it is not thereby admitted that they are necessary. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §13) | |
| A reaction: An interesting point, since there is presumably a difference between God foreseeing that future squares will have four corners, and His foreseeing the next war. It seems to me, though, that 'certainty' is bad enough news for free will, without necessity. |
| 2119 | People argue for God's free will, but it isn't needed if God acts in perfection following supreme reason [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: People try to safeguard God's freedom, as though it were not freedom of the highest sort to act in perfection following sovereign reason. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §03) |
| 5025 | Mind and body can't influence one another, but God wouldn't intervene in the daily routine [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is inconceivable that mind and body should have any influence on one another, and it is unreasonable simply to have recourse to the extraordinary operation of the universal cause in a matter which is ordinary and particular. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §33) | |
| A reaction: Leibniz was the ultimate intellectual contortionist! Here he is rejecting Cartesian interactionism, and also Malebranche's Occasionalism (God bridges the gap), in order to prepare for his own (daft) theory of what is now called Parallelism. |
| 5026 | Animals lack morality because they lack self-reflection [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: It is for lack of reflection on themselves that beasts have no moral qualities. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Discourse on Metaphysics [1686], §34) | |
| A reaction: Interesting, but I think this is false. I would say animals do have a sense of their self, because that is the most basic feature of any mind, but what they lack is second-order thought, that is, ability to reflect on and judge their own beliefs and acts. |
| 12125 | Teleological accounts are fine in metaphysics, but they stop us from searching for the causes [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: To say 'leaves are for protecting of fruit', or that 'clouds are for watering the earth', is well inquired and collected in metaphysic, but in physic they are impertinent. They are hindrances, and the search of the physical causes hath been neglected. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.7) | |
| A reaction: This is the standard rebellion against Aristotle which gave rise to the birth of modern science. The story has been complicated by natural selection, which bestows a sort of purpose on living things. Nowadays we pursue both paths. |
| 12118 | Essences are part of first philosophy, but as part of nature, not part of logic [Bacon] |
| Full Idea: I assign to summary philosophy the operation of essences (as quantity, similitude, diversity, possibility), with this distinction - that they be handled as they have efficacy in nature, and not logically. | |
| From: Francis Bacon (The Advancement of Learning [1605], II.VII.3) | |
| A reaction: I take this to be a splendid motto for scientific essentialism, in a climate where modal logicians appear to have taken over the driving seat in our understanding of essences. |
| 22899 | 'Thank goodness that's over' is not like 'thank goodness that happened on Friday' [Prior,AN] |
| Full Idea: One says 'thank goodness that is over', ..and it says something which it is impossible which any use of any tenseless copula with a date should convey. It certainly doesn't mean the same as 'thank goodness that occured on Friday June 15th 1954'. | |
| From: Arthur N. Prior (Changes in Events and Changes in Things [1968]), quoted by Adrian Bardon - Brief History of the Philosophy of Time 4 'Pervasive' | |
| A reaction: [Ref uncertain] This seems to be appealing to ordinary usage, in which tenses have huge significance. If we take time (with its past, present and future) as primitive, then tenses can have full weight. Did tenses mean anything at all to Einstein? |