4 ideas
| 7903 | The six perfections are giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom [Nagarjuna] |
| Full Idea: The six perfections are of giving, morality, patience, vigour, meditation, and wisdom. | |
| From: Nagarjuna (Mahaprajnaparamitashastra [c.120], 88) | |
| A reaction: What is 'morality', if giving is not part of it? I like patience and vigour being two of the virtues, which immediately implies an Aristotelian mean (which is always what is 'appropriate'). |
| 14349 | If there are no finks or antidotes at the fundamental level, the laws can't be ceteris paribus [Burge, by Corry] |
| Full Idea: Bird argues that there are no finks at the fundamental level, and unlikely to be any antidotes. It then follows that laws at the fundamental level will all be strict - not ceteris paribus - laws. | |
| From: report of Tyler Burge (Intellectual Norms and Foundations of Mind [1986]) by Richard Corry - Dispositional Essentialism Grounds Laws of Nature? 3 | |
| A reaction: [Bird's main target is Nancy Cartwright 1999] This is a nice line of argument. Isn't part of the ceteris paribus problem that two fundamental laws might interfere with one another? |
| 20646 | Helmholtz used 'energy' to mathematically link heat, light, electricity and magnetism [Helmholtz, by Watson] |
| Full Idea: Helmholtz provided the requisite mathematical formulation linking heat, light, electricity and magnetism, by treating these phenomena as different manifestations of 'energy'. | |
| From: report of Hermann von Helmholtz (On the Conservation of Force [1847]) by Peter Watson - Convergence 01 'Human' | |
| A reaction: I'm increasingly struck by the neglect by philosophers of nature of these amazing developments in 19th century physics, because they prefer the excitement of the latest nuclear physics. There is more philosophical interest in the earlier stages. |
| 20973 | All forces conserve the sum of kinetic and potential energy [Helmholtz, by Papineau] |
| Full Idea: Helmholtz crucially asserted that all forces conserve the sum of kinetic and potential energy; superficially non-conservative forces like friction are simply macroscopic manifestations of more fundamental forces conserving energy at the micro-level. | |
| From: report of Hermann von Helmholtz (On the Conservation of Force [1847]) by David Papineau - Thinking about Consciousness App 4.3 | |
| A reaction: Friction had been a problem case, because it appeared not to conserve energy when it slowed movement down. |