222 ideas
11461 | 323 (roughly): Euclid wrote 'Elements', summarising all of geometry [PG] |
11390 | 1000 (roughly): Upanishads written (in Sanskrit); religious and philosophical texts [PG] |
11391 | 750 (roughly): the Book of Genesis written by Hebrew writers [PG] |
11392 | 586: eclipse of the sun on the coast of modern Turkey was predicted by Thales of Miletus [PG] |
11395 | 570: Anaximander flourished in Miletus [PG] |
11396 | 563: the Buddha born in northern India [PG] |
11398 | 540: Lao Tzu wrote 'Tao Te Ching', the basis of Taoism [PG] |
11400 | 529: Pythagoras created his secretive community at Croton in Sicily [PG] |
11403 | 500: Heraclitus flourishes at Ephesus, in modern Turkey [PG] |
11404 | 496: Confucius travels widely, persuading rulers to be more moral [PG] |
11408 | 472: Empedocles persuades his city (Acragas in Sicily) to become a democracy [PG] |
11412 | 450 (roughly): Parmenides and Zeno visit Athens from Italy [PG] |
11414 | 445: Protagoras helps write laws for the new colony of Thurii [PG] |
11417 | 436 (roughly): Anaxagoras is tried for impiety, and expelled from Athens [PG] |
11421 | 427: Gorgias visited Athens as ambassador for Leontini [PG] |
11425 | 399: Socrates executed (with Plato absent through ill health) [PG] |
11432 | 387 (roughly): Plato returned to Athens, and founded the Academy [PG] |
11433 | 387 (roughly): Aristippus the Elder founder a hedonist school at Cyrene [PG] |
11440 | 367: the teenaged Aristotle came to study at the Academy [PG] |
11443 | 360 (roughly): Diogenes of Sinope lives in a barrel in central Athens [PG] |
11445 | 347: death of Plato [PG] |
11454 | 343: Aristotle becomes tutor to 13 year old Alexander (the Great) [PG] |
11456 | 335: Arisotle founded his school at the Lyceum in Athens [PG] |
11459 | 330 (roughly): Chuang Tzu wrote his Taoist book [PG] |
11465 | 322: Aristotle retired to Chalcis, and died there [PG] |
11468 | 307 (roughly): Epicurus founded his school at the Garden in Athens [PG] |
11470 | 301 (roughly): Zeno of Citium founded Stoicism at the Stoa Poikile in Athens [PG] |
11483 | 261: Cleanthes replaced Zeno as head of the Stoa [PG] |
11486 | 229 (roughly): Chrysippus replaced Cleanthes has head of the Stoa [PG] |
11492 | 157 (roughly): Carneades became head of the Academy [PG] |
11509 | 85: most philosophical activity moves to Alexandria [PG] |
11513 | 78: Cicero visited the stoic school on Rhodes [PG] |
11516 | 60 (roughly): Lucretius wrote his Latin poem on epicureanism [PG] |
11528 | 65: Seneca forced to commit suicide by Nero [PG] |
11531 | 80: the discourses of the stoic Epictetus are written down [PG] |
11535 | 170 (roughly): Marcus Aurelius wrote his private stoic meditations [PG] |
11537 | -200 (roughly): Sextus Empiricus wrote a series of books on scepticism [PG] |
11541 | 263: Porphyry began to study with Plotinus in Rome [PG] |
11545 | 310: Christianity became the official religion of the Roman empire [PG] |
11549 | 387: Ambrose converts Augustine to Christianity [PG] |
11555 | 523: Boethius imprisoned at Pavia, and begins to write [PG] |
11557 | 529: the emperor Justinian closes all the philosophy schools in Athens [PG] |
11558 | 622 (roughly): Mohammed writes the Koran [PG] |
11559 | 642: Arabs close the philosophy schools in Alexandria [PG] |
11560 | 910 (roughly): Al-Farabi wrote Arabic commentaries on Aristotle [PG] |
11562 | 1015 (roughly): Ibn Sina (Avicenna) writes a book on Aristotle [PG] |
11564 | 1090: Anselm publishes his proof of the existence of God [PG] |
11566 | 1115: Abelard is the chief logic teacher in Paris [PG] |
11573 | 1166: Ibn Rushd (Averroes) wrote extensive commentaries on Aristotle [PG] |
11581 | 1266: Aquinas began writing 'Summa Theologica' [PG] |
11586 | 1280: after his death, the teaching of Aquinas becomes official Dominican doctrine [PG] |
11591 | 1328: William of Ockham decides the Pope is a heretic, and moves to Munich [PG] |
17916 | 1347: the Church persecutes philosophical heresies [PG] |
11593 | 1470: Marsilio Ficino founds a Platonic Academy in Florence [PG] |
11596 | 1513: Machiavelli wrote 'The Prince' [PG] |
11599 | 1543: Copernicus publishes his heliocentric view of the solar system [PG] |
11601 | 1580: Montaigne publishes his essays [PG] |
11607 | 1600: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome [PG] |
11613 | 1619: Descartes's famous day of meditation inside a stove [PG] |
11614 | 1620: Bacon publishes 'Novum Organum' [PG] |
11619 | 1633: Galileo convicted of heresy by the Inquisition [PG] |
11623 | 1641: Descartes publishes his 'Meditations' [PG] |
11626 | 1650: death of Descartes, in Stockholm [PG] |
11627 | 1651: Hobbes publishes 'Leviathan' [PG] |
11633 | 1662: the Port Royal Logic is published [PG] |
11634 | 1665: Spinoza writes his 'Ethics' [PG] |
11643 | 1676: Leibniz settled as librarian to the Duke of Brunswick [PG] |
11649 | 1687: Newton publishes his 'Principia Mathematica' [PG] |
11652 | 1690: Locke publishes his 'Essay' [PG] |
11654 | 1697: Bayle publishes his 'Dictionary' [PG] |
11659 | 1713: Berkeley publishes his 'Three Dialogues' [PG] |
11666 | 1734: Voltaire publishes his 'Philosophical Letters' [PG] |
11667 | 1739: Hume publishes his 'Treatise' [PG] |
11675 | 1762: Rousseau publishes his 'Social Contract' [PG] |
11682 | 1781: Kant publishes his 'Critique of Pure Reason' [PG] |
11683 | 1785: Reid publishes his essays defending common sense [PG] |
11687 | 1798: the French Revolution [PG] |
11694 | 1807: Hegel publishes his 'Phenomenology of Spirit' [PG] |
11701 | 1818: Schopenhauer publishes his 'World as Will and Idea' [PG] |
11710 | 1840: Kierkegaard is writing extensively in Copenhagen [PG] |
11713 | 1843: Mill publishes his 'System of Logic' [PG] |
11715 | 1848: Marx and Engels publis the Communist Manifesto [PG] |
11717 | 1859: Darwin publishes his 'Origin of the Species' [PG] |
11721 | 1861: Mill publishes 'Utilitarianism' [PG] |
11724 | 1867: Marx begins publishing 'Das Kapital' [PG] |
11733 | 1879: Peirce taught for five years at Johns Hopkins University [PG] |
17907 | 1879: Frege invents predicate logic [PG] |
17909 | 1892: Frege's essay 'Sense and Reference' [PG] |
17908 | 1884: Frege publishes his 'Foundations of Arithmetic' [PG] |
11735 | 1885: Nietzsche completed 'Thus Spake Zarathustra' [PG] |
17911 | 1888: Dedekind publishes axioms for arithmetic [PG] |
11740 | 1890: James published 'Principles of Psychology' [PG] |
11742 | 1895 (roughly): Freud developed theories of the unconscious [PG] |
11745 | 1900: Husserl began developing Phenomenology [PG] |
11746 | 1903: Moore published 'Principia Ethica' [PG] |
11747 | 1904: Dewey became professor at Columbia University [PG] |
17910 | 1908: Zermelo publishes axioms for set theory [PG] |
11752 | 1910: Russell and Whitehead begin publishing 'Principia Mathematica' [PG] |
11756 | 1912: Russell meets Wittgenstein in Cambridge [PG] |
11762 | 1921: Wittgenstein's 'Tractatus' published [PG] |
11765 | 1927: Heidegger's 'Being and Time' published [PG] |
11768 | 1930: Frank Ramsey dies at 27 [PG] |
11770 | 1931: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems [PG] |
11773 | 1933: Tarski's theory of truth [PG] |
11783 | 1942: Camus published 'The Myth of Sisyphus' [PG] |
11784 | 1943: Sartre's 'Being and Nothingness' [PG] |
11787 | 1945: Merleau-Ponty's 'Phenomenology of Perception' [PG] |
17918 | 1947: Carnap published 'Meaning and Necessity' [PG] |
11794 | 1950: Quine's essay 'Two Dogmas of Empiricism' [PG] |
17917 | 1953: Wittgenstein's 'Philosophical Investigations' [PG] |
17919 | 1956: Place proposed mind-brain identity [PG] |
11804 | 1962: Kuhn's 'Structure of Scientific Revolutions' [PG] |
17921 | 1967: Putnam proposed functionalism of the mind [PG] |
11808 | 1971: Rawls's 'A Theory of Justice' [PG] |
11810 | 1972: Kripke publishes 'Naming and Necessity' [PG] |
11813 | 1975: Singer publishes 'Animal Rights' [PG] |
17920 | 1975: Putnam published his Twin Earth example [PG] |
11820 | 1986: David Lewis publishes 'On the Plurality of Worlds' [PG] |
15209 | Like disastrous small errors in navigation, small misunderstandings can wreck intellectual life [Harré/Madden] |
15215 | Philosophy devises and assesses conceptual schemes in the service of worldviews [Harré/Madden] |
15212 | Analysis of concepts based neither on formalism nor psychology can arise from examining what we know [Harré/Madden] |
15210 | Humeans see analysis in terms of formal logic, because necessities are fundamentally logical relations [Harré/Madden] |
15236 | Positivism says science only refers to immediate experiences [Harré/Madden] |
15227 | Logically, definitions have a subject, and a set of necessary predicates [Harré/Madden] |
15273 | Points can be 'dense' by unending division, but must meet a tougher criterion to be 'continuous' [Harré/Madden] |
15274 | Points are 'continuous' if any 'cut' point participates in both halves of the cut [Harré/Madden] |
15211 | There is not an exclusive dichotomy between the formal and the logical [Harré/Madden] |
15261 | Humeans can only explain change with continuity as successive replacement [Harré/Madden] |
15268 | Humeans construct their objects from events, but we construct events from objects [Harré/Madden] |
15257 | The induction problem fades if you work with things, rather than with events [Harré/Madden] |
15300 | Fundamental particulars can't change [Harré/Madden] |
15319 | Hard individual blocks don't fix what 'things' are; fluids are no less material things [Harré/Madden] |
15320 | Magnetic and gravity fields can occupy the same place without merging [Harré/Madden] |
15318 | Gravitational and electrical fields are, for a materialist, distressingly empty of material [Harré/Madden] |
15267 | Events are changes in states of affairs (which consist of structured particulars, with powers and relations) [Harré/Madden] |
15281 | Humeans see predicates as independent, but science says they are connected [Harré/Madden] |
15279 | Energy was introduced to physics to refer to the 'store of potency' of a moving ball [Harré/Madden] |
15276 | Some powers need a stimulus, but others are just released [Harré/Madden] |
15305 | Some powers are variable, others cannot change (without destroying an identity) [Harré/Madden] |
15218 | Scientists define copper almost entirely (bar atomic number) in terms of its dispositions [Harré/Madden] |
15302 | We explain powers by the natures of things, but explanations end in inexplicable powers [Harré/Madden] |
15303 | Maybe a physical field qualifies as ultimate, if its nature is identical with its powers [Harré/Madden] |
15258 | Powers are not qualities; they just point to directions of empirical investigation [Harré/Madden] |
15315 | What is a field of potentials, if it only consists of possible events? [Harré/Madden] |
15272 | The good criticism of substance by Humeans also loses them the vital concept of a thing [Harré/Madden] |
15304 | We can escape substance and its properties, if we take fields of pure powers as ultimate [Harré/Madden] |
15309 | The assumption that shape and solidity are fundamental implies dubious 'substance' in bodies [Harré/Madden] |
15264 | The notorious substratum results from substance-with-qualities; individuals-with-powers solves this [Harré/Madden] |
15262 | In logic the nature of a kind, substance or individual is the essence which is inseparable from what it is [Harré/Madden] |
15297 | We can infer a new property of a thing from its other properties, via its essential nature [Harré/Madden] |
15266 | We say the essence of particles is energy, but only so we can tell a story about the nature of things [Harré/Madden] |
15220 | To say something remains the same but lacks its capacities and powers seems a contradiction [Harré/Madden] |
15222 | Some individuals can gain or lose capacities or powers, without losing their identity [Harré/Madden] |
15296 | A particular might change all of its characteristics, retaining mere numerical identity [Harré/Madden] |
15275 | 'Dense' time raises doubts about continuous objects, so they need 'continuous' time [Harré/Madden] |
15271 | If things are successive instantaneous events, nothing requires those events to resemble one another [Harré/Madden] |
15256 | Humeans cannot step in the same river twice, because they cannot strictly form the concept of 'river' [Harré/Madden] |
15290 | What reduces the field of the possible is a step towards necessity [Harré/Madden] |
15291 | There is 'absolute' necessity (implied by all propositions) and 'relative' necessity (from what is given) [Harré/Madden] |
15230 | Logical necessity is grounded in the logical form of a statement [Harré/Madden] |
15214 | Natural necessity is not logical necessity or empirical contingency in disguise [Harré/Madden] |
15221 | The relation between what a thing is and what it can do or undergo relate by natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
15224 | A necessity corresponds to the nature of the actual [Harré/Madden] |
15232 | Natural necessity is when powerful particulars must produce certain results in a situation [Harré/Madden] |
15288 | People doubt science because if it isn't logically necessary it seems to be absolutely contingent [Harré/Madden] |
15289 | Property or event relations are naturally necessary if generated by essential mechanisms [Harré/Madden] |
15231 | Transcendental necessity is conditions of a world required for a rational being to know its nature [Harré/Madden] |
15234 | There is a transcendental necessity for each logical necessity, but the transcendental extends further [Harré/Madden] |
15260 | Counterfactuals are just right for analysing statements about the powers which things have [Harré/Madden] |
15233 | If natural necessity is used to include or exclude some predicate, the predicate is conceptually necessary [Harré/Madden] |
15242 | Having a child is contingent for a 'man', necessary for a 'father'; the latter reflects a necessity of nature [Harré/Madden] |
15216 | Is conceptual necessity just conventional, or does it mirror something about nature? [Harré/Madden] |
15235 | There is a conceptual necessity when properties become a standard part of a nominal essence [Harré/Madden] |
15228 | Necessity and contingency are separate from the a priori and the a posteriori [Harré/Madden] |
15252 | If Goldbach's Conjecture is true (and logically necessary), we may be able to conceive its opposite [Harré/Madden] |
15245 | It is silly to say that direct experience must be justified, either by reason, or by more experience [Harré/Madden] |
15244 | We experience qualities as of objects, not on their own [Harré/Madden] |
15248 | Inference in perception is unconvincingly defended as non-conscious and almost instantaneous [Harré/Madden] |
15269 | Humean impressions are too instantaneous and simple to have structure or relations [Harré/Madden] |
15286 | Clavius's Paradox: purely syntactic entailment theories won't explain, because they are too profuse [Harré/Madden] |
15283 | Simplicity can sort theories out, but still leaves an infinity of possibilities [Harré/Madden] |
15316 | The powers/natures approach has been so successful (for electricity, magnetism, gravity) it may be universal [Harré/Madden] |
15225 | Science investigates the nature and constitution of things or substances [Harré/Madden] |
15298 | We prefer the theory which explains and predicts the powers and capacities of particulars [Harré/Madden] |
15255 | Conjunctions explain nothing, and so do not give a reason for confidence in inductions [Harré/Madden] |
15270 | Hume's atomic events makes properties independent, and leads to problems with induction [Harré/Madden] |
15284 | Contraposition may be equivalent in truth, but not true in nature, because of irrelevant predicates [Harré/Madden] |
15285 | The items put forward by the contraposition belong within different natural clusters [Harré/Madden] |
15287 | The possibility that all ravens are black is a law depends on a mechanism producing the blackness [Harré/Madden] |
15306 | Only changes require explanation [Harré/Madden] |
15293 | If explanation is by entailment, that lacks a causal direction, unlike natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
15294 | Powers can explain the direction of causality, and make it a natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
15254 | If the nature of particulars explains their powers, it also explains their relations and behaviour [Harré/Madden] |
15317 | Powers and natures lead us to hypothesise underlying mechanisms, which may be real [Harré/Madden] |
15310 | Solidity comes from the power of repulsion, and shape from the power of attraction [Harré/Madden] |
15219 | Essence explains passive capacities as well as active powers [Harré/Madden] |
15301 | The very concepts of a particular power or nature imply the possibility of being generalised [Harré/Madden] |
15226 | What properties a thing must have to be a type of substance can be laid down a priori [Harré/Madden] |
15229 | We say there is 'no alternative' in all sorts of contexts, and there are many different grounds for it [Harré/Madden] |
13304 | Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius] |
15292 | We can base the idea of a natural kind on the mechanisms that produce natural necessity [Harré/Madden] |
15299 | Species do not have enough constancy to be natural kinds [Harré/Madden] |
15253 | If the concept of a cause includes its usual effects, we call it a 'power' [Harré/Madden] |
15278 | Humean accounts of causal direction by time fail, because cause and effect can occur together [Harré/Madden] |
15246 | Active causal power is just objects at work, not something existing in itself [Harré/Madden] |
15213 | Causation always involves particular productive things [Harré/Madden] |
15217 | Efficient causes combine stimulus to individuals, absence of contraints on activity [Harré/Madden] |
15277 | The cause (or part of it) is what stimulates or releases the powerful particular thing involved [Harré/Madden] |
15237 | Originally Humeans based lawlike statements on pure qualities, without particulars [Harré/Madden] |
15238 | Being lawlike seems to resist formal analysis, because there are always counter-examples [Harré/Madden] |
15223 | Necessary effects will follow from some general theory specifying powers and structure of a world [Harré/Madden] |
15241 | Humeans say there is no necessity in causation, because denying an effect is never self-contradictory [Harré/Madden] |
15240 | In lawful universal statements (unlike accidental ones) we see why the regularity holds [Harré/Madden] |
15239 | We could call any generalisation a law, if it had reasonable support and no counter-evidence [Harré/Madden] |
15243 | We perceive motion, and not just successive occupations of different positions [Harré/Madden] |
15265 | 'Energy' is a quasi-substance invented as the bearer of change during interactions [Harré/Madden] |
15280 | 'Kinetic energy' is used to explain the effects of moving things when they are stopped [Harré/Madden] |
15321 | Space can't be an individual (in space), but it is present in all places [Harré/Madden] |
20820 | Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus] |
15259 | Chemical atoms have two powers: to enter certain combinations, and to emit a particular spectrum [Harré/Madden] |
15263 | Chemistry is not purely structural; CO2 is not the same as SO2 [Harré/Madden] |
15295 | Theism is supposed to make the world more intelligible - and should offer results [Harré/Madden] |