57 ideas
| 8060 | In the 17th-18th centuries morality offered a cure for egoism, through altruism [MacIntyre] |
| 8053 | Twentieth century social life is re-enacting eighteenth century philosophy [MacIntyre] |
| 8047 | Philosophy has been marginalised by its failure in the Enlightenment to replace religion [MacIntyre] |
| 8062 | Proof is a barren idea in philosophy, and the best philosophy never involves proof [MacIntyre] |
| 8052 | To find empiricism and science in the same culture is surprising, as they are really incompatible [MacIntyre] |
| 17405 | If a theory can be fudged, so can observations [Scerri] |
| 8057 | Unpredictability doesn't entail inexplicability, and predictability doesn't entail explicability [MacIntyre] |
| 8054 | Social sciences discover no law-like generalisations, and tend to ignore counterexamples [MacIntyre] |
| 17397 | The periodic system is the big counterexample to Kuhn's theory of revolutionary science [Scerri] |
| 17393 | Scientists eventually seek underlying explanations for every pattern [Scerri] |
| 17403 | The periodic table suggests accommodation to facts rates above prediction [Scerri] |
| 21050 | I can only make decisions if I see myself as part of a story [MacIntyre] |
| 8056 | AI can't predict innovation, or consequences, or external relations, or external events [MacIntyre] |
| 8059 | The good life for man is the life spent seeking the good life for man [MacIntyre] |
| 8034 | We still have the appearance and language of morality, but we no longer understand it [MacIntyre] |
| 8036 | Unlike expressions of personal preference, evaluative expressions do not depend on context [MacIntyre] |
| 8049 | Moral judgements now are anachronisms from a theistic age [MacIntyre] |
| 8045 | The failure of Enlightenment attempts to justify morality will explain our own culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8051 | Mention of 'intuition' in morality means something has gone wrong with the argument [MacIntyre] |
| 8048 | When 'man' is thought of individually, apart from all roles, it ceases to be a functional concept [MacIntyre] |
| 8035 | In trying to explain the type of approval involved, emotivists are either silent, or viciously circular [MacIntyre] |
| 8037 | The expression of feeling in a sentence is in its use, not in its meaning [MacIntyre] |
| 8040 | Emotivism cannot explain the logical terms in moral discourse ('therefore', 'if..then') [MacIntyre] |
| 8042 | Nowadays most people are emotivists, and it is embodied in our culture [MacIntyre] |
| 8058 | Maybe we can only understand rules if we first understand the virtues [MacIntyre] |
| 7097 | Virtue is secondary to a role-figure, defined within a culture [MacIntyre, by Statman] |
| 8043 | Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies [MacIntyre] |
| 8061 | If morality just is emotion, there are no external criteria for judging emotions [MacIntyre] |
| 8038 | Since Moore thinks the right action produces the most good, he is a utilitarian [MacIntyre] |
| 8050 | There are no natural or human rights, and belief in them is nonsense [MacIntyre] |
| 1748 | Archelaus was the first person to say that the universe is boundless [Archelaus, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 17394 | Natural kinds are what are differentiated by nature, and not just by us [Scerri] |
| 17421 | If elements are natural kinds, might the groups of the periodic table also be natural kinds? [Scerri] |
| 17396 | The colour of gold is best explained by relativistic effects due to fast-moving inner-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| 17420 | The stability of nuclei can be estimated through their binding energy [Scerri] |
| 17411 | If all elements are multiples of one (of hydrogen), that suggests once again that matter is unified [Scerri] |
| 17415 | A big chemistry idea is that covalent bonds are shared electrons, not transfer of electrons [Scerri] |
| 17392 | How can poisonous elements survive in the nutritious compound they compose? [Scerri] |
| 17391 | Periodicity and bonding are the two big ideas in chemistry [Scerri] |
| 17404 | Chemistry does not work from general principles, but by careful induction from large amounts of data [Scerri] |
| 17407 | The electron is the main source of chemical properties [Scerri] |
| 17409 | Does radioactivity show that only physics can explain chemistry? [Scerri] |
| 17418 | It is now thought that all the elements have literally evolved from hydrogen [Scerri] |
| 17398 | 19th C views said elements survived abstractly in compounds, but also as 'material ingredients' [Scerri] |
| 17406 | Moseley, using X-rays, showed that atomic number ordered better than atomic weight [Scerri] |
| 17408 | Some suggested basing the new periodic table on isotopes, not elements [Scerri] |
| 17412 | Elements are placed in the table by the number of positive charges - the atomic number [Scerri] |
| 17413 | Elements in the table are grouped by having the same number of outer-shell electrons [Scerri] |
| 17416 | Orthodoxy says the periodic table is explained by quantum mechanics [Scerri] |
| 17414 | Pauli explained the electron shells, but not the lengths of the periods in the table [Scerri] |
| 17417 | To explain the table, quantum mechanics still needs to explain order of shell filling [Scerri] |
| 17410 | Moseley showed the elements progress in units, and thereby clearly identified the gaps [Scerri] |
| 17395 | Elements were ordered by equivalent weight; later by atomic weight; finally by atomic number [Scerri] |
| 17422 | The best classification needs the deepest and most general principles of the atoms [Scerri] |
| 17419 | Since 99.96% of the universe is hydrogen and helium, the periodic table hardly matters [Scerri] |
| 5989 | Archelaus said life began in a primeval slime [Archelaus, by Schofield] |
| 8055 | If God is omniscient, he confronts no as yet unmade decisions, so decisions are impossible [MacIntyre] |