7 ideas
8207 | The quest for simplicity drove scientists to posit new entities, such as molecules in gases [Quine] |
8208 | In arithmetic, ratios, negatives, irrationals and imaginaries were created in order to generalise [Quine] |
18085 | Values that approach zero, becoming less than any quantity, are 'infinitesimals' [Cauchy] |
18084 | When successive variable values approach a fixed value, that is its 'limit' [Cauchy] |
13007 | Archimedes defined a straight line as the shortest distance between two points [Archimedes, by Leibniz] |
8205 | Explaining events just by bodies can't explain two events identical in space-time [Quine] |
8206 | Necessity could be just generalisation over classes, or (maybe) quantifying over possibilia [Quine] |