5 ideas
| 16756 | Substantial forms must exist, to explain the stability of metals like silver and tin [Albertus Magnus] |
| Full Idea: There is no reason why the matter in any natural thing should be stable in its nature, if it is not completed by a substantial form. But we see that silver is stable, and tin and other metals. Therefore they will seem to be perfected by substantial forms. | |
| From: Albertus Magnus (On Minerals [1260], III.1.7), quoted by Robert Pasnau - Metaphysical Themes 1274-1671 24.2 | |
| A reaction: Illuminating. This may be the best reason for proposing substantial forms. Once materialism arrives, the so-called 'laws' of nature have to be imposed on the material to do the job - but what the hell is a law supposed to be? |
| 3916 | Hopi consistently prefers verbs and events to nouns and things [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: Hopi, with its preference for verbs, as contrasted to our own liking for nouns, perpetually turns our propositions about things into propositions about events. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.63) | |
| A reaction: This should provoke careful thought about ontology - without concluding that it is entirely relative to language. |
| 3917 | Scientific thought is essentially a specialised part of Indo-European languages [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: What we call "scientific thought" is a specialisation of the western Indo-European type of language. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.246) | |
| A reaction: This is the beginnings of an absurd extreme relativist view of science, based on a confusion about meaning and thought. |
| 15998 | Perfect love is not in spite of imperfections; the imperfections must be loved as well [Kierkegaard] |
| Full Idea: To love another in spite of his weaknesses and errors and imperfections is not perfect love. No, to love is to find him lovable in spite of, and together with, his weaknesses and errors and imperfections. | |
| From: Søren Kierkegaard (Works of Love [1847], p.158) | |
| A reaction: A true romantic at heart, Kierkegaard ideally posits perfect love as unconditional love, and not just of good attributes, predicates and conditions. However, the real question for both me and Kierkegaard is, is perfect love desirable or even possible?[SY] |
| 3915 | The Hopi have no concept of time as something flowing from past to future [Whorf] |
| Full Idea: A Hopi has no general notion or intuition of time as a smooth flowing continuum in which everything in the universe proceeds at an equal rate, out of a future, through a present, into a past. | |
| From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (An American Indian model of the Universe [1936], p.57) | |
| A reaction: If true, this would not so much support relativism of language as the view that that conception of time is actually false. |