3 ideas
| 16567 | Scientists know everything about nothing, philosophers nothing about everything [Sagan,D] |
| Full Idea: The scientist learns more and more about less and less, until she knows everything about nothing, whereas a philosopher learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing about everything. | |
| From: Dorion Sagan (Cosmic Apprentice [2013]) | |
| A reaction: [Came via Twitter] Not sure if this is true, but it is too nice to miss. |
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 8433 | There are few traces of an event before it happens, but many afterwards [Lewis, by Horwich] |
| Full Idea: Lewis claims that most events are over-determined by subsequent states of the world, but not by their history. That is, the future of every event contains many independent traces of its occurrence, with little prior indication that it would happen. | |
| From: report of David Lewis (Counterfactual Dependence and Time's Arrow [1979]) by Paul Horwich - Lewis's Programme p.209 | |
| A reaction: Lewis uses this asymmetry to deduce the direction of causation, and hence the direction of time. Most people (including me, I think) would prefer to use the axiomatic direction of time to deduce directions of causation. Lewis was very wicked. |