7 ideas
| 19594 | General statements about nature are not valid [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: General statements are not valid in the study of nature. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 17) | |
| A reaction: This is his striking obsession with the particularity and fine detail of nature. Alexander von Humbolt was exploring nature in S.America in this year. It sounds wrong about physics, but possibly right about biology. |
| 19596 | The whole body is involved in the formation of thoughts [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: In the formation of thoughts all parts of the body seem to me to be working together. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 20) | |
| A reaction: I can only think that Spinoza must be behind this thought, or La Mettrie. It seems a strikingly unusual intuition for its time, when almost everyone takes a spiritual sort of dualism for granted. |
| 20064 | Actions are not mere effects of reasons, but are under their control [Audi,R] |
| Full Idea: An action for a reason is one that is, in a special way, under the control of reason. It is a response to, not a mere effect of, a reason. | |
| From: Robert Audi (Action, Intention and Reason [1992], p.177), quoted by Rowland Stout - Action 6 'Alien' | |
| A reaction: This modifies Davidson's 'reasons are causes'. Audi has a deviant causal chain which causes trouble for his idea, but Stout says he is right to focus on causal 'processes' (an Aristotelian idea) rather than causal 'chains'. |
| 22489 | 'Good' is an attributive adjective like 'large', not predicative like 'red' [Geach, by Foot] |
| Full Idea: Geach puts 'good' in the class of attributive adjectives, such as 'large' and 'small', contrasting such adjectives with 'predicative' adjectives such as 'red'. | |
| From: report of Peter Geach (Good and Evil [1956]) by Philippa Foot - Natural Goodness Intro | |
| A reaction: [In Analysis 17, and 'Theories of Ethics' ed Foot] Thus any object can simply be red, but something can only be large or small 'for a rat' or 'for a car'. Hence nothing is just good, but always a good so-and-so. This is Aristotelian, and Foot loves it. |
| 19593 | Persons are shaped by a life history; splendid persons are shaped by world history [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: What is it that shapes a person if not his life history? And in the same way a splendid person is shaped by nothing other than world history. Many people live better in the past and in the future than in the present. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 15) | |
| A reaction: Clearly there is a lot to be said for splendid people who live entirely in the present (such as jazz musicians). Some people do have an awesomely wide historical perspective on their immediate lives. Palaeontology is not the master discipline though! |
| 19595 | Nature is a whole, and its individual parts cannot be wholly understood [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Nature is a whole - in which each part in itself can never be wholly understood. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 18) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem right when studying some item in a laboratory, but it seems undeniable when you consider the history and future of each item. |
| 19592 | The basic relations of nature are musical [Novalis] |
| Full Idea: Musical relations seem to me to be actually the basic relations of nature. | |
| From: Novalis (Last Fragments [1800], 10) | |
| A reaction: Novalis shows no signs of being a pythagorean, and then suddenly comes out with this. I suppose if you love music, this thought should float into your mind at regular intervals, because the power of music is so strong. Does he mean ratios? |