Combining Texts

All the ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs' and 'Teplitz Fragments'

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4 ideas

12. Knowledge Sources / D. Empiricism / 5. Empiricism Critique
19590 Empiricists are passive thinkers, given their philosophy by the external world and fate [Novalis]
     Full Idea: An empiricist is one whose way of thinking is an effect of the external world and of fate - the passive thinker - to whom his philosophy is given.
     From: Novalis (Teplitz Fragments [1798], 33)
     A reaction: Novalis goes on to enthuse about 'magical idealism', so he rejects empiricism. This is an early attack on the Myth of the Given, found in Sellars and McDowell.
13. Knowledge Criteria / E. Relativism / 5. Language Relativism
3914 Language arranges sensory experience to form a world-order [Whorf]
     Full Idea: Language first of all is a classification and arrangement of the stream of sensory experience which results in a certain world-order.
     From: Benjamin Lee Whorf (Punctual and segmentive Hopi verbs [1936], p.55)
     A reaction: This is only true to a limited degree. See Davidson's 'On the very idea of a conceptual scheme'. All humans share a world-order, to some extent.
25. Social Practice / E. Policies / 5. Education / b. Education principles
13304 Learned men gain more in one day than others do in a lifetime [Posidonius]
     Full Idea: In a single day there lies open to men of learning more than there ever does to the unenlightened in the longest of lifetimes.
     From: Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]), quoted by Seneca the Younger - Letters from a Stoic 078
     A reaction: These remarks endorsing the infinite superiority of the educated to the uneducated seem to have been popular in late antiquity. It tends to be the religions which discourage great learning, especially in their emphasis on a single book.
27. Natural Reality / D. Time / 1. Nature of Time / d. Time as measure
20820 Time is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed [Posidonius, by Stobaeus]
     Full Idea: Posidonius defined time thus: it is an interval of motion, or the measure of speed and slowness.
     From: report of Posidonius (fragments/reports [c.95 BCE]) by John Stobaeus - Anthology 1.08.42
     A reaction: Hm. Can we define motion or speed without alluding to time? Looks like we have to define them as a conjoined pair, which means we cannot fully understand either of them.