Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'Science and Method', 'teachings' and 'Philosophical Theology'

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3 ideas

6. Mathematics / A. Nature of Mathematics / 2. Geometry
One geometry cannot be more true than another [Poincaré]
     Full Idea: One geometry cannot be more true than another; it can only be more convenient.
     From: Henri Poincaré (Science and Method [1908], p.65), quoted by Stewart Shapiro - Philosophy of Mathematics
     A reaction: This is the culminating view after new geometries were developed by tinkering with Euclid's parallels postulate.
28. God / B. Proving God / 3. Proofs of Evidence / b. Teleological Proof
Design is seen in the way ideas match the world, in the mechanisms of evolution, and in values [Tennant,FR, by PG]
     Full Idea: There is evidence for design in the correspondence of pure ideas to the world, in the origin and mechanism of evolution, and in the existence of moral values and beauty.
     From: report of F.R. Tennant (Philosophical Theology [1930], II.IV) by PG - Db (ideas)
29. Religion / C. Spiritual Disciplines / 3. Buddhism
Nagarjuna and others pronounced the world of experience to be an illusion [Nagarjuna, by Armstrong,K]
     Full Idea: Many later Buddhists (after Nagarjuna, c.120 CE) developed a belief that everything we experience is an illusion: in the West we would call them idealists.
     From: report of Nagarjuna (teachings [c.120]) by Karen Armstrong - A History of God Ch.3
     A reaction: This is just one step beyond Plato (who at least hung onto the immediate world as an inferior reality), and is presumably intended to motivate meditators to break out of the misery of existence into a higher realm. Personally I am against it.