3 ideas
| 23367 | Even pointing a finger should only be done for a reason [Epictetus] |
| Full Idea: Philosophy says it is not right even to stretch out a finger without some reason. | |
| From: Epictetus (fragments/reports [c.57], 15) | |
| A reaction: The key point here is that philosophy concerns action, an idea on which Epictetus is very keen. He rather despise theory. This idea perfectly sums up the concept of the wholly rational life (which no rational person would actually want to live!). |
| 23123 | Basic to human culture are binary oppositions, such as eating raw or cooked [Levi-Strauss, by Green,TH] |
| Full Idea: Lévi-Strauss made canonic to French structuralism the idea that human culture could be understood through a series of binary oppositionsn - the difference between what could be eaten raw and what cooked being one of the most fundamental. | |
| From: report of Claude Lévi-Strauss (works [1950]) by T.H. Green - Prolegomena to Ethics 1 | |
| A reaction: My guess is that such oppositions can often be illuminating, but will always be eventually judged as too simplistic. |
| 17613 | We should judge principles by the science, not science by some fixed principles [Zermelo] |
| Full Idea: Principles must be judged from the point of view of science, and not science from the point of view of principles fixed once and for all. Geometry existed before Euclid's 'Elements', just as arithmetic and set theory did before Peano's 'Formulaire'. | |
| From: Ernst Zermelo (New Proof of Possibility of Well-Ordering [1908], §2a) | |
| A reaction: This shows why the axiomatisation of set theory is an ongoing and much-debated activity. |