4 ideas
| 16010 | While faith is a passion (as Kierkegaard says), wisdom is passionless [Wittgenstein] |
| Full Idea: Wisdom is passionless. But faith by contrast is what Kierkegaard calls a passion. | |
| From: Ludwig Wittgenstein (Culture and Value [1945], 53e) | |
| A reaction: [Idea from SY] Personally I don't agree that wisdom is passionless. At the very least, Aristotle allows the wise person to be appropriately angry. [PG] |
| 8249 | Class membership is not transitive, unlike being part of a part of the whole [Lesniewski, by George/Van Evra] |
| Full Idea: Lesniewski distinguished the part-whole relationship from class membership. Membership is not transitive: if s is an element of t, and t of u, then s is not an element of u, whereas a part of a part is a part of the whole. | |
| From: report of Stanislaw Lesniewski (works [1916]) by George / Van Evra - The Rise of Modern Logic 7 | |
| A reaction: If I am a member of a sports club, and my club is a member of the league, I am not thereby a member of the league (so clubs are classes, not wholes). This distinction is clearly fairly crucial in ontology. |
| 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. |