4 ideas
| 3568 | Surely ALL truths are externally justified, by the facts? [Cross,A] |
| Full Idea: Surely ALL truths are externally justified? | |
| From: Adam Cross (works [2001]), quoted by PG - Db (ideas) | |
| A reaction: A very nice warning to aspiring externalists. If you actually think the justification is somehow 'out there', then everything is going to be justified, by its own facts. We need to get the justification 'in here'. |
| 4870 | The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible [Spinoza] |
| Full Idea: The most beautiful hand seen through the microscope will appear horrible. | |
| From: Baruch de Spinoza (Letters to Hugo Boxel [1674], 1674?) | |
| A reaction: Spinoza offers this nicely expressed point to support his view that beauty is strictly relative to observers, but I am unconvinced. If the outline of the hand is its key aesthetic feature, the viewer through the microscope cannot see it. |
| 13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
| Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes. | |
| From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078 | |
| A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book. |
| 20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
| Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness. | |
| From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42 | |
| A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them. |