4 ideas
| 15873 | Laws of nature are just records of regularities and correlations, with concepts to make recording them easier [Mach, by Harré] |
| Full Idea: For Mach, the laws of nature are simply the compendious record of sensory regularities, correlations of elements. Any additional concepts are no more than symbols or devices for the convenient recording of general sensory patterns. | |
| From: report of Ernst Mach (Popular Scientific Lectures [1894], pp.201-5) by Rom Harré - Laws of Nature 2 | |
| A reaction: Mach is the high priest of scientific positivism, which is really just hard-line empiricism. |
| 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. |
| 19436 | Bare or primary matter is passive; it is clothed or secondary matter which contains action [Leibniz] |
| Full Idea: The active principle is not attributed by me to bare or primary matter, which is merely passive ...but to clothed or secondary matter which in addition contains a primitive entelechy, or active principle. | |
| From: Gottfried Leibniz (Letters to Wagner [1710], 1710 §2) | |
| A reaction: Secondary matter contains monads. The puzzling question is what primary matter consists of. It is not atoms, because it is infinitely divisible, and it seems to be composed of corpuscles. But what is it made of? Just gunge? He says it is 'flux'. |
| 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. |