3 ideas
| 4870 | The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Hugo Boxel [1674], 1674?) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza offers this nicely expressed point to support his view that beauty is strictly relative to observers, but I am unconvinced. If the outline of the hand is its key aesthetic feature, the viewer through the microscope cannot see it. |
| 468 | Musical performance can reveal a range of virtues [Damon of Ath.] |
| Full Idea: In singing and playing the lyre, a boy will be likely to reveal not only courage and moderation, but also justice. | |
| From: Damon (fragments/reports [c.460 BCE], B4), quoted by (who?) - where? |
| 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. |