7 ideas
| 3912 | I must exist in order to be mistaken, so that even if I am mistaken, I can't be wrong about my own existence [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: Since therefore I must exist in order to be mistaken, then even if I am mistaken, there can be no doubt that I am not mistaken in my knowledge that I exist…. I know that I exist, and I also know that I know. | |
| From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], Ch.XI.26) | |
| A reaction: Fine, but the main problem is his over-confidence about a stable personal identity that does the thinking. |
| 3102 | Why don't we experience or remember going to sleep at night? [Magee] |
| Full Idea: As a child it was incomprehensible to me that I did not experience going to sleep, and never remembered it. When my sister said 'Nobody remembers that', I just thought 'How does she know?' | |
| From: Bryan Magee (Confessions of a Philosopher [1997], Ch.I) | |
| A reaction: This is actually evidence for something - that we do not have some sort of personal identity which is separate from consciousness, so that "I am conscious" would literally mean that an item has a property, which it can lose. |
| 6683 | The contact of spirit and body is utterly amazing, and incomprehensible [Augustine] |
| Full Idea: The manner of contact of spirit with body, which produces a living being, is utterly amazing and beyond our powers of comprehension | |
| From: Augustine (City of God [c.427], XXI.10) | |
| A reaction: This leads to a rather clear objection against a theory which needs a miracle to explain a common natural phenomenon. At least Augustine was beginning to recognise that interaction is a bit of a problem. |
| 17402 | Mendeleev saw three principles in nature: matter, force and spirit (where the latter seems to be essence) [Mendeleev, by Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Mendeleev rejected one unifying principles in favour of three basic components of nature: matter (substance), force (energy), and spirit (soul). 'Spirit' is said to be what we now mean by essentialism - what is irreducibly peculiar to the object. | |
| From: report of Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870]) by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Making' |
| 17399 | Elements don't survive in compounds, but the 'substance' of the element does [Mendeleev] |
| Full Idea: Neither mercury as a metal nor oxygen as a gas is contained in mercury oxide; it only contains the substance of the elements, just as steam only contains the substance of ice. | |
| From: Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870], I:23), quoted by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Nature' | |
| A reaction: [1889 edn] Scerri glosses the word 'substance' as meaning essence. |
| 17400 | Mendeleev focused on abstract elements, not simple substances, so he got to their essence [Mendeleev, by Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Because he was attempting to classify abstract elements, not simple substances, Mendeleev was not misled by nonessential chemical properties. | |
| From: report of Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870]) by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Making' | |
| A reaction: I'm not fully clear about this, but I take it that Mendeleev stood back from the messy observations, and tried to see the underlying simpler principles. 'Simple substances' were ones that had not so far been decomposed. |
| 17401 | Mendeleev had a view of elements which allowed him to overlook some conflicting observations [Mendeleev] |
| Full Idea: His view of elements allowed Mendeleev to maintain the validity of the periodic table even in instances where observational evidence seemed to point against it. | |
| From: Dmitri Mendeleev (The Principles of Chemistry [1870]), quoted by Eric R. Scerri - The Periodic Table 04 'Making' | |
| A reaction: Mendeleev seems to have focused on abstract essences of elements, rather than on the simplest substances they had so far managed to isolate. |