43 ideas
| 9593 | Progress in philosophy is incremental, not an immature seeking after drama [Williamson] |
| 9594 | Correspondence to the facts is a bad account of analytic truth [Williamson] |
| 9601 | The realist/anti-realist debate is notoriously obscure and fruitless [Williamson] |
| 9599 | There cannot be vague objects, so there may be no such thing as a mountain [Williamson] |
| 9602 | Common sense and classical logic are often simultaneously abandoned in debates on vagueness [Williamson] |
| 9598 | Modal thinking isn't a special intuition; it is part of ordinary counterfactual thinking [Williamson] |
| 16536 | Williamson can't base metaphysical necessity on the psychology of causal counterfactuals [Lowe on Williamson] |
| 9596 | We scorn imagination as a test of possibility, forgetting its role in counterfactuals [Williamson] |
| 9597 | There are 'armchair' truths which are not a priori, because experience was involved [Williamson] |
| 9592 | Intuition is neither powerful nor vacuous, but reveals linguistic or conceptual competence [Williamson] |
| 20181 | When analytic philosophers run out of arguments, they present intuitions as their evidence [Williamson] |
| 7458 | The reliability of witnesses depends on whether they benefit from their observations [Laplace, by Hacking] |
| 17405 | If a theory can be fudged, so can observations [Scerri] |
| 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] |
| 3441 | If a supreme intellect knew all atoms and movements, it could know all of the past and the future [Laplace] |
| 9595 | You might know that the word 'gob' meant 'mouth', but not be competent to use it [Williamson] |
| 9600 | If languages are intertranslatable, and cognition is innate, then cultures are all similar [Williamson] |
| 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] |
| 17409 | Does radioactivity show that only physics can explain chemistry? [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] |
| 17415 | A big chemistry idea is that covalent bonds are shared electrons, not transfer of electrons [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] |
| 17395 | Elements were ordered by equivalent weight; later by atomic weight; finally by atomic number [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] |
| 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] |
| 17417 | To explain the table, quantum mechanics still needs to explain order of shell filling [Scerri] |
| 17419 | Since 99.96% of the universe is hydrogen and helium, the periodic table hardly matters [Scerri] |
| 17414 | Pauli explained the electron shells, but not the lengths of the periods in the table [Scerri] |
| 17410 | Moseley showed the elements progress in units, and thereby clearly identified the gaps [Scerri] |
| 17412 | Elements are placed in the table by the number of positive charges - the atomic number [Scerri] |
| 17422 | The best classification needs the deepest and most general principles of the atoms [Scerri] |