41 ideas
| 18543 | Do aesthetic reasons count as reasons, if they are rejectable without contradiction? [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The judgement of beauty makes a claim about its object, and can be supported by reasons. But the reasons do not compel the judgement and can be rejected without contradiction. So are they reasons or aren't they? | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that what he is really referring to is evidence rather than reasons. |
| 18542 | Defining truth presupposes that there can be a true definition [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: How can you define truth, without already assuming the distinction between a true definition and a false one? | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: Don't say we have to accept truth as yet another primitive! Philosophers are out of business if all the basic concepts are primitive. The axiomatic approach to truth is an alternative - by specifying how the primitive should be used. |
| 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. |
| 18546 | The pleasure taken in beauty also aims at understanding and valuing [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Like the pleasure in friendship, the pleasure in beauty is curious: it aims to understand its object, and to value what it finds. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: At least he is trying to pin down the way in which aesthetic pleasure is phenomenologically different from other kinds of pleasure. |
| 18550 | Art gives us imaginary worlds which we can view impartially [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: One aim of art is to present imaginary worlds, towards which we can adopt, as part of the integral aesthetic attitude, a posture of impartial concern. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 5) | |
| A reaction: It connects to the pleasure of watching people when they don't know they are being watched (such as watching the street from a restaurant window). Scruton's suggestion makes art resemble examples in philosophy. Cf the Frege-Geach problem in ethics. |
| 18544 | Maybe 'beauty' is too loaded, and we should talk of fittingness or harmony [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Maybe we can understand the 'beauty' of a building better if we describe it in another and less loaded way, as a form of fittingness or harmony. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: Almost everyone accepts the word 'beauty' for some things, such as a beautiful face, or goal, or steak. I remember a female interviewer writing that, reluctantly, the only appropriate word she could find for Nureyev's face was 'beautiful'. |
| 18553 | Beauty shows us what we should want in order to achieve human fulfilment [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Beauty speaks to us of human fulfilment: not of things that we want, but of things that we ought to want, because human nature requires them. Such, at least, is my belief. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 7) | |
| A reaction: I'm not sure how this works with a beautiful natural landscape. And what should I see that I ought to desire after viewing a great Rembrandt self-portrait? That I don't want to end up looking as bleak as that? Hm. Lofty words. |
| 18556 | Beauty is rationally founded, inviting meaning, comparison and self-reflection [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Beauty is rationally founded; it challenges us to find meaning in its object, to make critical comparisons, and to examine our own lives and emotions in the light of what we find. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 9) | |
| A reaction: This is the Kantian tradition, and I'm not finding it very persuasive. It seems to place the value of beauty in what we do with it afterwards, and he seems to make beauty a necessary stepping stone to virtue. I see beauty as more sui generis. |
| 18548 | Natural beauty reassures us that the world is where we belong [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The experience of natural beauty is not a sense of 'how nice!' or 'how pleasant!' It contains a reassurance that this world is a right and fitting place to be - a home in which our human powers and prospects find confirmation. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 2) | |
| A reaction: To call it a 'reassurance' and 'confirmation' sounds like theism, anthropomorphism, or the pathetic fallacy. That said, this is certainly a heart-warming idea, and hence must contain a grain of truth. |
| 18551 | Croce says art makes inarticulate intuitions conscious; rival views say the audience is the main concern [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The Croce model is of an inarticulate inner state (an 'intuition') becoming articulate and conscious through artistic expression. The rival model is fitting thing together so as to create links which resonate in the audience's feelings. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 5) | |
| A reaction: The first model tells you nothing about how the artist imagines the audience reacting. The second model tells you nothing about what matters personally to the artist. A good theory must do both! |
| 18541 | Beauty (unlike truth and goodness) is questionable as an ultimate value [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The status of beauty as an ultimate value is questionable, in the way that the status of truth and goodness are not. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 1) | |
| A reaction: We suspect that a love of beauty may be a bit parochial, where it is hard to conceive of living creatures anywhere in the cosmos who don't value the other two. |
| 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. |
| 18554 | Prostitution is wrong because it hardens the soul, since soul and body are one [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The condemnation of prostitution was not just puritan bigotry; it was a recognition of a profound truth, that you and your body are not two things but one, and by selling the body you harden your soul. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Beauty: a very short introduction [2011], 7) | |
| A reaction: No one, I imagine, who condones or even enthuses about prostitution would hope that their own daughter followed the profession, so there is something wrong with it. But must an enthusiastic and cheerful prostitute necessarily have a hard soul? |
| 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. |
| 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') |
| 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') |
| 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. |
| 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') |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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) |
| 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') |
| 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. |
| 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] |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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') |
| 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. |
| 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. |