152 ideas
| 7396 | Hobbes created English-language philosophy [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| 17016 | Philosophy must abstract from the senses [Newton] |
| 17240 | Definitions are the first step in philosophy [Hobbes] |
| 6211 | Laughter is a sudden glory in realising the infirmity of others, or our own formerly [Hobbes] |
| 8014 | Resolve a complex into simple elements, then reconstruct the complex by using them [Hobbes, by MacIntyre] |
| 17237 | Definitions of things that are caused must express their manner of generation [Hobbes] |
| 17239 | Definition is resolution of names into successive genera, and finally the difference [Hobbes] |
| 17241 | A defined name should not appear in the definition [Hobbes] |
| 17242 | 'Petitio principii' is reusing the idea to be defined, in disguised words [Hobbes] |
| 17245 | A part of a part is a part of a whole [Hobbes] |
| 18079 | Newton developed a kinematic approach to geometry [Newton, by Kitcher] |
| 13152 | We can talk of 'innumerable number', about the infinite points on a line [Newton] |
| 17258 | If we just say one, one, one, one, we don't know where we have got to [Hobbes] |
| 13151 | Not all infinites are equal [Newton] |
| 18082 | Quantities and ratios which continually converge will eventually become equal [Newton] |
| 17783 | A number is not a multitude, but a unified ratio between quantities [Newton] |
| 16789 | Only supernatural means could annihilate anything once it had being [Hobbes] |
| 17253 | Change is nothing but movement [Hobbes] |
| 7559 | Every part of the universe is body, and non-body is not part of it [Hobbes] |
| 16670 | Accidents are just modes of thinking about bodies [Hobbes] |
| 16621 | Accidents are not parts of bodies (like blood in a cloth); they have accidents as things have a size [Hobbes] |
| 17011 | I suspect that each particle of bodies has attractive or repelling forces [Newton] |
| 16734 | The complete power of an event is just the aggregate of the qualities that produced it [Hobbes] |
| 17247 | The only generalities or universals are names or signs [Hobbes] |
| 14960 | Bodies are independent of thought, and coincide with part of space [Hobbes] |
| 17250 | If you separate the two places of one thing, you will also separate the thing [Hobbes] |
| 17249 | If you separated two things in the same place, you would also separate the places [Hobbes] |
| 17248 | If a whole body is moved, its parts must move with it [Hobbes] |
| 17028 | Particles mutually attract, and cohere at short distances [Newton] |
| 16620 | A chair is wood, and its shape is the form; it isn't 'compounded' of the matter and form [Hobbes] |
| 17014 | The place of a thing is the sum of the places of its parts [Newton] |
| 16790 | A body is always the same, whether the parts are together or dispersed [Hobbes] |
| 17244 | To make a whole, parts needn't be put together, but can be united in the mind [Hobbes] |
| 17233 | Particulars contain universal things [Hobbes] |
| 17246 | Some accidental features are permanent, unless the object perishes [Hobbes] |
| 17251 | The feature which picks out or names a thing is usually called its 'essence' [Hobbes] |
| 16622 | Essence is just an artificial word from logic, giving a way of thinking about substances [Hobbes] |
| 17257 | It is the same river if it has the same source, no matter what flows in it [Hobbes] |
| 12853 | Some individuate the ship by unity of matter, and others by unity of form [Hobbes] |
| 17256 | If a new ship were made of the discarded planks, would two ships be numerically the same? [Hobbes] |
| 16794 | As an infant, Socrates was not the same body, but he was the same human being [Hobbes] |
| 17255 | Two bodies differ when (at some time) you can say something of one you can't say of the other [Hobbes] |
| 6215 | 'Contingent' means that the cause is unperceived, not that there is no cause [Hobbes] |
| 16582 | We can imagine a point swelling and contracting - but not how this could be done [Hobbes] |
| 16638 | The qualities of the world are mere appearances; reality is the motions which cause them [Hobbes] |
| 2356 | Appearance and reality can be separated by mirrors and echoes [Hobbes] |
| 7405 | Experience can't prove universal truths [Hobbes] |
| 16688 | Evidence is conception, which is imagination, which proceeds from the senses [Hobbes] |
| 2357 | Dreams must be false because they seem absurd, but dreams don't see waking as absurd [Hobbes] |
| 17546 | If you changed one of Newton's concepts you would destroy his whole system [Heisenberg on Newton] |
| 17027 | Science deduces propositions from phenomena, and generalises them by induction [Newton] |
| 17022 | We should admit only enough causes to explain a phenomenon, and no more [Newton] |
| 17238 | Science aims to show causes and generation of things [Hobbes] |
| 17021 | Natural effects of the same kind should be assumed to have the same causes [Newton] |
| 20653 | Six reduction levels: groups, lives, cells, molecules, atoms, particles [Putnam/Oppenheim, by Watson] |
| 17026 | From the phenomena, I can't deduce the reason for the properties of gravity [Newton] |
| 17260 | Imagination is just weakened sensation [Hobbes] |
| 19373 | A 'conatus' is an initial motion, experienced by us as desire or aversion [Hobbes, by Arthur,R] |
| 2384 | Those actions that follow immediately the last appetite are voluntary [Hobbes] |
| 2358 | Freedom is absence of opposition to action; the idea of 'free will' is absurd [Hobbes] |
| 6213 | A man cannot will to will, or will to will to will, so the idea of a voluntary will is absurd [Hobbes] |
| 2385 | If a man suddenly develops an intention of doing something, the cause is out of his control, not in his will [Hobbes] |
| 6214 | Liberty and necessity are consistent, as when water freely flows, by necessity [Hobbes] |
| 6208 | Conceptions and apparitions are just motion in some internal substance of the head [Hobbes] |
| 2948 | Sensation is merely internal motion of the sentient being [Hobbes] |
| 23987 | The 'simple passions' are appetite, desire, love, aversion, hate, joy, and grief [Hobbes, by Goldie] |
| 17261 | Apart from pleasure and pain, the only emotions are appetite and aversion [Hobbes] |
| 17236 | Words are not for communication, but as marks for remembering what we have learned [Hobbes] |
| 2362 | The will is just the last appetite before action [Hobbes] |
| 7408 | It is an error that reason should control the passions, which give right guidance on their own [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| 2363 | Reason is usually general, but deliberation is of particulars [Hobbes] |
| 7407 | Good and evil are what please us; goodness and badness the powers causing them [Hobbes] |
| 2360 | 'Good' is just what we desire, and 'Evil' what we hate [Hobbes] |
| 7410 | Self-preservation is basic, and people judge differently about that, implying ethical relativism [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| 2368 | Men's natural desires are no sin, and neither are their actions, until law makes it so [Hobbes] |
| 6209 | There is no absolute good, for even the goodness of God is goodness to us [Hobbes] |
| 2359 | Desire and love are the same, but in the desire the object is absent, and in love it is present [Hobbes] |
| 2370 | All voluntary acts aim at some good for the doer [Hobbes] |
| 7409 | Hobbes shifted from talk of 'the good' to talk of 'rights' [Hobbes, by Tuck] |
| 6210 | Life has no end (not even happiness), because we have desires, which presuppose a further end [Hobbes] |
| 8015 | Hobbes wants a contract to found morality, but shared values are needed to make a contract [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
| 2371 | A contract is a mutual transfer of rights [Hobbes] |
| 2372 | The person who performs first in a contract is said to 'merit' the return, and is owed it [Hobbes] |
| 5337 | For Hobbes the Golden Rule concerns not doing things, whereas Jesus encourages active love [Hobbes, by Flanagan] |
| 2374 | In the violent state of nature, the merest suspicion is enough to justify breaking a contract [Hobbes] |
| 8016 | Fear of sanctions is the only motive for acceptance of authority that Hobbes can think of [MacIntyre on Hobbes] |
| 2375 | Suspicion will not destroy a contract, if there is a common power to enforce it [Hobbes] |
| 2377 | No one who admitted to not keeping contracts could ever be accepted as a citizen [Hobbes] |
| 2379 | If there is a good reason for breaking a contract, the same reason should have stopped the making of it [Hobbes] |
| 2373 | The first performer in a contract is handing himself over to an enemy [Hobbes] |
| 2382 | Someone who keeps all his contracts when others are breaking them is making himself a prey to others [Hobbes] |
| 2383 | Virtues are a means to peaceful, sociable and comfortable living [Hobbes] |
| 2376 | Injustice is the failure to keep a contract, and justice is the constant will to give what is owed [Hobbes] |
| 2367 | In time of war the life of man is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short [Hobbes] |
| 19764 | Hobbes attributed to savages the passions which arise in a law-bound society [Hobbes, by Rousseau] |
| 20566 | Hobbes says the people voluntarily give up their sovereignty, in a contract with a ruler [Hobbes, by Oksala] |
| 2366 | There is not enough difference between people for one to claim more benefit than another [Hobbes] |
| 20485 | Hobbes says people are roughly equal; Locke says there is no right to impose inequality [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
| 2369 | If we seek peace and defend ourselves, we must compromise on our rights [Hobbes] |
| 20484 | We should obey the laws of nature, provided other people are also obeying them [Hobbes, by Wolff,J] |
| 7573 | The legal positivism of Hobbes said law is just formal or procedural [Hobbes, by Jolley] |
| 2380 | Punishment should only be for reform or deterrence [Hobbes] |
| 23609 | I act justly if I follow my Prince in an apparently unjust war, and refusing to fight would be injustice [Hobbes] |
| 2361 | If fear of unknown powers is legal it is religion, if it is illegal it is superstition [Hobbes] |
| 6212 | Lust involves pleasure, and also the sense of power in pleasing others [Hobbes] |
| 16600 | Prime matter is body considered with mere size and extension, and potential [Hobbes] |
| 6421 | Newton's four fundamentals are: space, time, matter and force [Newton, by Russell] |
| 13470 | Mass is central to matter [Newton, by Hart,WD] |
| 17020 | An attraction of a body is the sum of the forces of their particles [Newton] |
| 17252 | Acting on a body is either creating or destroying a property in it [Hobbes] |
| 23012 | Newtonian causation is changes of motion resulting from collisions [Newton, by Baron/Miller] |
| 17254 | An effect needs a sufficient and necessary cause [Hobbes] |
| 2364 | Causation is only observation of similar events following each other, with nothing visible in between [Hobbes] |
| 17235 | A cause is the complete sum of the features which necessitate the effect [Hobbes] |
| 15863 | The principles of my treatise are designed to fit with a belief in God [Newton] |
| 16746 | Principles of things are not hidden features of forms, but the laws by which they were formed [Newton] |
| 8340 | I do not pretend to know the cause of gravity [Newton] |
| 17008 | You have discovered that elliptical orbits result just from gravitation and planetary movement [Newton, by Leibniz] |
| 17010 | We have given up substantial forms, and now aim for mathematical laws [Newton] |
| 17023 | I am not saying gravity is essential to bodies [Newton] |
| 17009 | I won't object if someone shows that gravity consistently arises from the action of matter [Newton] |
| 13150 | The motions of the planets could only derive from an intelligent agent [Newton] |
| 12178 | That gravity should be innate and essential to matter is absurd [Newton] |
| 15866 | Newton reclassified vertical motion as violent, and unconstrained horizontal motion as natural [Newton, by Harré] |
| 17234 | Motion is losing one place and acquiring another [Hobbes] |
| 15958 | Inertia rejects the Aristotelian idea of things having natural states, to which they return [Newton, by Alexander,P] |
| 20968 | Newton's Third Law implies the conservation of momentum [Newton, by Papineau] |
| 17017 | 1: Bodies rest, or move in straight lines, unless acted on by forces [Newton] |
| 17018 | 2: Change of motion is proportional to the force [Newton] |
| 17019 | 3: All actions of bodies have an equal and opposite reaction [Newton] |
| 17259 | 'Force' is the quantity of movement imposed on something [Hobbes] |
| 17547 | Newton's idea of force acting over a long distance was very strange [Heisenberg on Newton] |
| 20966 | Newton introduced forces other than by contact [Newton, by Papineau] |
| 20967 | Newton's laws cover the effects of forces, but not their causes [Newton, by Papineau] |
| 16708 | Newton's forces were accused of being the scholastics' real qualities [Pasnau on Newton] |
| 13153 | I am studying the quantities and mathematics of forces, not their species or qualities [Newton] |
| 12724 | The aim is to discover forces from motions, and use forces to demonstrate other phenomena [Newton] |
| 13593 | Newton showed that falling to earth and orbiting the sun are essentially the same [Newton, by Ellis] |
| 20969 | Early Newtonians could not formulate conservation of energy, having no concept of potential energy [Newton, by Papineau] |
| 17013 | Absolute space is independent, homogeneous and immovable [Newton] |
| 22915 | Newton needs intervals of time, to define velocity and acceleration [Newton, by Le Poidevin] |
| 22893 | Newton thought his laws of motion needed absolute time [Newton, by Bardon] |
| 17012 | Time exists independently, and flows uniformly [Newton] |
| 14012 | Absolute time, from its own nature, flows equably, without relation to anything external [Newton] |
| 22954 | Newtonian mechanics does not distinguish negative from positive values of time [Newton, by Coveney/Highfield] |
| 17243 | Past times can't exist anywhere, apart from in our memories [Hobbes] |
| 17015 | If there is no uniform motion, we cannot exactly measure time [Newton] |
| 17025 | If a perfect being does not rule the cosmos, it is not God [Newton] |
| 17024 | The elegance of the solar system requires a powerful intellect as designer [Newton] |
| 7411 | The attributes of God just show our inability to conceive his nature [Hobbes] |
| 2365 | Religion is built on ignorance and misinterpretation of what is unknown or frightening [Hobbes] |
| 2378 | Belief in an afterlife is based on poorly founded gossip [Hobbes] |