43 ideas
| 22496 | Wisdom only implies the knowledge achievable in any normal lifetime [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom implies no more knowledge and understanding than anyone of normal capacity can and should acquire in the course of an ordinary life. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: Have philosophers stopped talking about wisdom precisely because you now need three university degrees to be considered even remotely good at phillosophy? Hence wisdom is an inferior attainment, because Foot is right. |
| 7628 | Broad rejects the inferential component of the representative theory [Broad, by Maund] |
| Full Idea: Broad, one of the most important modern defenders of the representative theory of perception, explicitly rejects the inferential component of the theory. | |
| From: report of C.D. Broad (Mind and Its Place in Nature [1925]) by Barry Maund - Perception Ch.1 | |
| A reaction: Since the supposed inferences happen much too quickly to be conscious, it is hard to see how we could distinguish an inference from an interpretation mechanism. Personally I interpret things long before the question of truth arises. |
| 17405 | If a theory can be fudged, so can observations [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: A theorist may have designed his theory to fit the facts, but is it not equally possible for observers to be influenced by a theory in their report of experimental facts? | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 05 'Power') | |
| A reaction: This is in reply to Lipton's claim that prediction is better than accommodation because of the 'fudging' problem. The reply is that you might fudge to achieve a prediction. If it was correct, that wouldn't avoid the charge of fudging. |
| 17397 | The periodic system is the big counterexample to Kuhn's theory of revolutionary science [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The history of the periodic system appears to be the supreme counterexample to Kuhn's thesis, whereby scientific developments proceed in a sudden, revolutionary fashion. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 03 'Rapid') | |
| A reaction: What is lovely about the periodic table is that it seems so wonderfully right, and hence no revolution has ever been needed. The big theories of physics and cosmology are much more precarious. |
| 17393 | Scientists eventually seek underlying explanations for every pattern [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Whenever scientists are presented with a useful pattern or system of classification, it is only a matter of time before the begin to ask whether there may be some underlying explanation for the pattern. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Evol') | |
| A reaction: Music to my ears, against the idea that the sole aim of science is accurately describe the patterns. |
| 17403 | The periodic table suggests accommodation to facts rates above prediction [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Rather than proving the value of prediction, the development and acceptance of the periodic table may give us a powerful illustration of the importance of accommodation, that is, the ability of a new scientific theory to explain already known facts. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 05 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: The original table made famous predictions, but also just as many wrong ones (Scerri:143), and Scerri thinks this aspect has been overrated. |
| 23694 | All criterions of practical rationality derive from goodness of will [Foot] |
| Full Idea: I want to say, baldly, that there is no criterion for practical rationality that is not derived from that of goodness of will. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Where does that put the successful and clever criminal? Presumably they are broadly irrational, but narrowly rational - but that is not very clear distinction. She says Kant's concept of the good will is too pure, and unrelated to human good. |
| 23686 | Moral reason is not just neutral, because morality is part of the standard of rationality [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her late period she again reverses her thoughts on moral rationalism; …rather than a neutral rationality which fulfils desires, she argues that morality ought to be thought of as part of the standard of rationality itself. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: This comes much closer to the Greek and Aristotelian concept of logos. They saw morality as inseparable from our judgements about how the world is. All 'sensible' thinking will involve what is good for humanity. |
| 23693 | Practical rationality must weigh both what is morally and what is non-morally required [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Different considerations are on a par, in that judgement about what is required by practical rationality must take account of their interaction: of the weight of the ones we call non-moral as well as those we call moral. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: Her final settled view of rationalism in morality, it seems. The point is that moral considerations are not paramount, because she sees possible justifications for ignoring moral rules (like 'don't lie') in certain practical situations. |
| 23687 | Moral virtues arise from human nature, as part of what makes us good human beings [Foot, by Hacker-Wright] |
| Full Idea: In her later work she offers a view of the relationship of morality to human nature, arguing that the moral virtues are part of what makes us good as human beings. | |
| From: report of Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001]) by John Hacker-Wright - Philippa Foot's Moral Thought Intro | |
| A reaction: In this phase she talks explicitly of the Aristotelian idea that successful function is the grounding of what is good for any living being, including humans. |
| 22493 | Sterility is a human defect, but the choice to be childless is not [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Lack of capacity to reproduce is a defect in a human being. But choice of childlessness and even celibacy is not thereby shown to be defective choice, because human good is not the same as plant or animal good. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 3) | |
| A reaction: Is failure to reproduce a defect in an animal? If goodness and virtue derive from function, it is hard to see how deliberate childlessness could be a human good, even if it is not a defect. Choosing to terminate a hereditary defect seems good. |
| 22492 | Virtues are as necessary to humans as stings are to bees [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Virtues play a necessary part in the life of human beings as do stings in the life of a bee. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 2) | |
| A reaction: This presumably rests on the Aristotelian idea that humans are essentially social (as opposed to solitary humans who choose to be social, perhaps in a contractual way, as Plato implies). |
| 22491 | Moral evaluations are not separate from facts, but concern particular facts about functioning [Foot] |
| Full Idea: A moral evaluation does not stand over against the statement of a matter of fact, but rather has to do with facts about a particular subject matter, as do evaluations of such things as sight and hearing in animals. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: She avoids the word 'function', and only deals with living creatures, but she uses a 'good knife' as an example, and this Aristotelian view clearly applies to any machine which has a function. |
| 22497 | Deep happiness usually comes from the basic things in life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: Possible objects of deep happiness seem to be things that are basic in human life, such as home, and family, and work, and friendship. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: I've not encountered discussion of 'deep' happiness before. I heard of an old man in tears because he had just seen a Purple Emperor butterfly for the first time. She makes it sound very conservative. How about mountaineering achievements? |
| 22498 | Happiness is enjoying the pursuit and attainment of right ends [Foot] |
| Full Idea: In my terminology 'happiness' is understood as the enjoyment of good things, meaning the enjoyment in attaining, and in pursuing, right ends. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 6) | |
| A reaction: A modified version of Aristotle's view, which she contrasts with McDowell's identification of happiness with the life of virtue. They all seem to have an optimistic hope that the pleasure in being a bit wicked is false happiness. |
| 23695 | Good actions can never be justified by the good they brings to their agent [Foot] |
| Full Idea: There is no good case for assessing the goodness of human action by reference only to good that each person brings to himself. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 1) | |
| A reaction: She observes that even non-human animals often act for non-selfish reasons. The significance of this is its rejection of her much earlier view that virtues are justified by the good they bring their possessor. |
| 22499 | We all know that just pretending to be someone's friend is not the good life [Foot] |
| Full Idea: We know perfectly well that it is not true that the best life would consist in successfully pretending friendship: having friends to serve one but without being a real friend oneself. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 7) | |
| A reaction: For some skallywags the achieving of something for nothing seems to be very much the good life, but not many of them want to exploit people who are seen to be their friends. |
| 22495 | Someone is a good person because of their rational will, not their body or memory [Foot] |
| Full Idea: To speak of a good person is to speak of an individual not in respect of his body, or of faculties such as sight and memory, but as concerns his rational will (his 'will as controllable by reason'). | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 5) | |
| A reaction: She more or less agrees with Kant that the only truly good moral thing is a good will, though she has plenty of other criticisms of his views. |
| 22502 | Refraining from murder is not made good by authenticity or self-fulfilment [Foot] |
| Full Idea: If a stranger should come on us when we are sleeping he will not think it all right to kill us. …In human life as it is, this kind of action is not made good by authenticity or self-fulfilment in the one who does it. | |
| From: Philippa Foot (Natural Goodness [2001], 7) | |
| A reaction: A rare swipe from Foot at existentialism, which she hardly ever mentions. I find it hard to see these existential virtues as in any way moral. It means nothing to other citizens whether one of their number is 'authentic'. |
| 17394 | Natural kinds are what are differentiated by nature, and not just by us [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Natural kinds are realistic scientific entities that are differentiated by nature itself rather than by our human attempts at classification. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Evol') |
| 17421 | If elements are natural kinds, might the groups of the periodic table also be natural kinds? [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Elements defined by their atomic numbers are frequently assumed to represent 'natural kinds' in chemistry. ...The question arises as to whether groups of elements appearing in the periodic table might also represent natural kinds. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Elements') | |
| A reaction: Scerri says the distinction is not as sharp as that between the elements. As a realist, he believes there is 'one ideal periodic classification', which would then make the periods into kinds. |
| 17396 | The colour of gold is best explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Many seemingly mundane properties of elements such as the characteristic color of gold ....can best be explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 01 'Under') | |
| A reaction: John Locke - I wish you were reading this! That we could work out the hidden facts of gold, and thereby explain and predict the surface properties we experience, is exactly what Locke thought to be forever impossible. |
| 17420 | The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy, a quantity given by the difference between their masses and the masses of their constituent particles. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Stabil') |
| 17411 | If all elements are multiples of one (of hydrogen), that suggests once again that matter is unified [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The work of Moseley and others rehabilitated Prout's hypothesis that all elements were composites of hydrogen, being exact multiples of 1. ..This revitalized some philososophical notions of the unity of all matter, criticised by Mendeleev and others. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Philos') |
| 17407 | The electron is the main source of chemical properties [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: It is the electron that is mainly responsible for the chemical properties of the elements. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Intro') |
| 17415 | A big chemistry idea is that covalent bonds are shared electrons, not transfer of electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: One of the most influential ideas in modern chemistry is of a covalent bond as a shared pair of electrons (not as transfer of electrons and the formation of ionic bonds). | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 08 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Gilbert Newton Lewis was responsible for this. |
| 17392 | How can poisonous elements survive in the nutritious compound they compose? [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: A central mystery of chemistry is how the elements survive in the compounds they form. For example, how can poisonous grey metal sodium combine with green poisonous gas chlorine, to make salt, which is non-poisonous and essential for life? | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Elem') | |
| A reaction: A very nice question which had never occurred to me. If our digestive system pulled the sodium apart from the chlorine, we would die. |
| 17391 | Periodicity and bonding are the two big ideas in chemistry [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The two big ideas in chemistry are chemical periodicity and chemical bonding, and they are deeply interconnected. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], Intro 'Per') |
| 17404 | Chemistry does not work from general principles, but by careful induction from large amounts of data [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Unlike in physics, chemical reasoning does not generally proceed unambiguously from general principles. It is a more inductive science in which large amounts of observational data must be carefully weighed. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 05 'Mendel') | |
| A reaction: This is why essentialist thinking was important for Mendeleev, because it kept his focus on the core facts beneath the messy and incomplete data. |
| 17409 | Does radioactivity show that only physics can explain chemistry? [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Some authors believe that the interpretation of the properties of the elements passed from chemistry to physics as a result of the discovery of radioactivity. ...I believe this view to be overly reductionist. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Radio') | |
| A reaction: It is all a matter of the explanations, and how far down they have to go. If most non-radiocative chemistry doesn't need to mention the physics, then chemistry is largely autonomous. |
| 17418 | It is now thought that all the elements have literally evolved from hydrogen [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The elements are now believed to have literally evolved from hydrogen by various mechanisms. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Evol) |
| 17398 | 19th C views said elements survived abstractly in compounds, but also as 'material ingredients' [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: In the 19th century abstract elements were believed to be permanent and responsible for observed properties in compounds, but (departing from Aristotle) they were also 'material ingredients', thus linking the metaphysical and material realm. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 04 'Nature') | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure I can make sense of this gulf between the metaphysical and the material realm, so this was an account heading for disaster. |
| 17406 | Moseley, using X-rays, showed that atomic number ordered better than atomic weight [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: By using X-rays, Henry Moseley later discovered that a better ordering principle for the periodic system is atomic numbers rather than atomic weight, by subjecting many different elements to bombardment. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: Moseley was killed in the First World War at the age of 26. It is interesting that they more or less worked out the whole table, before they discovered the best principle on which to found it. |
| 17408 | Some suggested basing the new periodic table on isotopes, not elements [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Some chemists even suggested that the periodic table would have to be abandoned in favor of a classification system that included a separate place for every single isotope. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Intro') | |
| A reaction: The extreme case is tin, which has 21 isotopes, so is tin a fundamental, or is each of the isotopes a fundamental? Does there have to be a right answer to that? All tin isotopes basically react in the same way, so we stick with the elements table. |
| 17412 | Elements are placed in the table by the number of positive charges - the atomic number [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The serial number of an element in the periodic table, its atomic number, corresponds to the number of positive charges in the atom. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 07 'Models') | |
| A reaction: Note that this is a feature of the nucleus, despite that fact that the electrons decide the chemical properties. A nice model for Locke's views on essentialism. |
| 17413 | Elements in the table are grouped by having the same number of outer-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The modern notion is that atoms fall into the same group of the periodic table if they possess the same numbers of outer-shell electrons. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 07 'Quantum') | |
| A reaction: Scerri goes on to raise questions about this, on p.242. By this principle helium should be an alkaline earth element, but it isn't. |
| 17416 | Orthodoxy says the periodic table is explained by quantum mechanics [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The prevailing reductionist climate implies that quantum mechanics inevitably provides a more fundamental explanation for the periodic system. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 08 'Concl') | |
| A reaction: Scerri has argued that chemists did much better than physicists in working out how the outer electron shells of atoms worked, by induction from data, rather than inference from basic principles. |
| 17414 | Pauli explained the electron shells, but not the lengths of the periods in the table [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Pauli explained the maximum number of electrons successive shells can accommodate, ...but it does not explain the lengths of the periods, which is the really crucial property of the periodic table. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 07 'Pauli') | |
| A reaction: Paulis' Exclusion Principle says no two electrons in an atom can have the same set of four quantum numbers. He added 'spin' as a fourth number. It means 'electrons cannot be distinguished' (243). Scerri says the big problem is still not fully explained. |
| 17410 | Moseley showed the elements progress in units, and thereby clearly identified the gaps [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Moseley's work showed that the successive elements in the periodic table have an atomic number greater by one unit. The gaps could then be identified definitively, as 43, 61, 72, 75, 85, 87, and 91. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 06 'Henry') | |
| A reaction: [compressed] |
| 17395 | Elements were ordered by equivalent weight; later by atomic weight; finally by atomic number [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: Historically, the ordering of elements across periods was determined by equivalent weight, then later by atomic weight, and eventually by atomic number. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 01 'React') | |
| A reaction: So they used to be ordered by quantities (measured by real numbers), but eventually were ordered by unit items (counted by natural numbers). There need to be distinct protons (unified) to be counted. |
| 17422 | The best classification needs the deepest and most general principles of the atoms [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: An optimal classification can be obtained by identifying the deepest and most general principles that govern the atoms of the elements. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Continuum') | |
| A reaction: He adds (p.286) that the best system will add the 'greatest degree of regularity' to these best principles. |
| 17417 | To explain the table, quantum mechanics still needs to explain order of shell filling [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: The order of shell filling has not yet been deduced from first principles, and this issue cannot be avoided if one is to really ask whether quantum mechanics explains the periodic system in a fundamental manner. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 09 'From') |
| 17419 | Since 99.96% of the universe is hydrogen and helium, the periodic table hardly matters [Scerri] |
| Full Idea: All the elements other than hydrogen and helium make up just 0.04% of the universe. Seen from this perspective, the periodic table appears to rather insignificant. | |
| From: Eric R. Scerri (The Periodic Table [2007], 10 'Astro') |