3 ideas
| 10245 | 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. |
| 10650 | In the military, persons are parts of parts of large units, but not parts of those large units [Rescher] |
| Full Idea: In military usage, persons can be parts of small units, and small units parts of large ones; but persons are never parts of large units. | |
| From: Nicholas Rescher (Axioms for the Part Relation [1955]), quoted by Achille Varzi - Mereology 2.1 | |
| A reaction: This much-cited objection to the transitivity of the 'part' relation seems very odd. There could hardly be an army or a regiment if there weren't soldiers to make up parts of it. |
| 13267 | Temporal parts is a crazy doctrine, because it entails constantly creating stuff ex nihilo [Thomson, by Koslicki] |
| Full Idea: Thomson famously objects that the doctrine of temporal parts is 'a crazy metaphysic - obviously false', since it entails that material objects are constantly being generated ex nihilo (or, at least, the stuff of which they are composed is). | |
| From: report of Judith (Jarvis) Thomson (Parthood and Identity across Time [1983], p.210) by Kathrin Koslicki - The Structure of Objects 2.2 | |
| A reaction: The related objections are to ask what the temporal 'width' of a part is, and whether the joins are visible. |