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15957
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Essential definitions show the differences that discriminate things, and make them what they are [Boyle]
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Full Idea:
Essential definitions are such as are taken from the essential differences of things, which constitute them in such a sort of natural bodies, and discriminate them from all those of any other sort.
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From:
Robert Boyle (The Origin of Forms and Qualities [1666], p.41?), quoted by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles
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A reaction:
I don't think this goes as far as the aim Aristotle had in definitions, which was more than merely to 'discriminate' each thing. A full definition explains the thing as well.
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15965
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Boyle attacked a contemporary belief that powers were occult things [Boyle, by Alexander,P]
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Full Idea:
Boyle attacks an idea of powers, held by some modern schoolmen and chemists, that makes powers occult.
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From:
report of Robert Boyle (The Origin of Forms and Qualities [1666]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 03.3
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A reaction:
[This involves Boyle's famous example of a key having the power to turn a lock] On p.86 Alexander says the 'occult' belief is in affinities, antipathies, attractions and repulsions. How did Boyle explain magnetism?
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22132
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Species and genera are individual concepts which naturally signify many individuals [William of Ockham]
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Full Idea:
In his mature nominalism, species and genera are identified with certain mental qualities called concepts or intentions of the mind. Ontologically they are individuals too, like everthing else, ...but they naturally signify many different individuals.
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From:
William of Ockham (works [1335]), quoted by Claude Panaccio - William of Ockham p.1056
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A reaction:
'Naturally' is the key word, because the concepts are not fictions, but natural responses to encountering individuals in the world. I am an Ockhamist.
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16034
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Form is not a separate substance, but just the manner, modification or 'stamp' of matter [Boyle]
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Full Idea:
I understand the word 'form' to mean, not a real substance distinct from matter, but only the matter itself of a natural body, with its peculiar manner of existence [corpuscular structure], which may be called its 'essential modification' or 'stamp'.
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From:
Robert Boyle (The Origin of Forms and Qualities [1666], p.324), quoted by Jan-Erik Jones - Real Essence §3
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A reaction:
I don't think Aristotle ever thought that a form was separate from its matter, let alone qualifying as a substance. On the whole, Boyle attacks scholastic philosophy, rather than Aristotle.
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15953
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To cite a substantial form tells us what produced the effect, but not how it did it [Boyle]
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Full Idea:
If it be demanded why rhubarb purges choler, snow dazzles the eyes rather than grass etc., that these effects are performed by substantial forms of the respective bodies is at best but to tell me what is the agent, not how the effect is wrought.
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From:
Robert Boyle (The Origin of Forms and Qualities [1666], p.47?), quoted by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 01.2
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A reaction:
This is the problem of the 'virtus dormitiva' of opium (which at least tells you it was the opium what done it). I take Aristotle to have aspired to a lot more than this. He wanted a full definition, which would contain lots of information about the form.
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15962
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Boyle's term 'texture' is not something you feel, but is unobservable structures of particles [Boyle, by Alexander,P]
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Full Idea:
Perhaps Boyle's most important technical terms is 'texture'. ...It must not be confused with the way we feel the texture of a surface like sandpaper or velvet; it is rather a structure of unobservable particles and so it is not directly observable.
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From:
report of Robert Boyle (The Origin of Forms and Qualities [1666]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 03.2
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A reaction:
This is the basis for Alexander's reassessment of what Boyle and Locke meant by a 'secondary quality', which, he says, is a physical feature of objects, not a mental experience.
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15952
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The corpuscles just have shape, size and motion, which explains things without 'sympathies' or 'forces' [Boyle, by Alexander,P]
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Full Idea:
In Boyle's corpuscular philosophy, all material substances are composed of minute particles or corpuscles, with ordinary properties such as shape, size and motion. There was no need for occult relations between them, such as sympathies, or even forces.
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From:
report of Robert Boyle (The Origin of Forms and Qualities [1666]) by Peter Alexander - Ideas, Qualities and Corpuscles 01.1
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19381
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The past has ceased to exist, and the future does not yet exist, so time does not exist [William of Ockham]
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Full Idea:
Time is composed of non-entities, because it is composed of the past which does not exist now, although it did exist, and of the future, which does not yet exist; therefore time does not exist.
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From:
William of Ockham (works [1335], 6:496), quoted by Richard T.W. Arthur - Leibniz 7 'Nominalist'
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A reaction:
I've a lot of sympathy with this! I favour Presentism, so the past is gone and the future is yet to arrive. But we have no coherent concept of a present moment of any duration to contain reality. We are just completely bogglificated by it all.
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