23 ideas
22659 | It is wisdom to believe what you desire, because belief is needed to achieve it [James] |
22115 | Wise people should contemplate and discuss the truth, and fight against falsehood [Aquinas] |
22657 | All good philosophers start from a dumb conviction about which truths can be revealed [James] |
22647 | A complete system is just a classification of the whole world's ingredients [James] |
22648 | A single explanation must have a single point of view [James] |
22644 | Our greatest pleasure is the economy of reducing chaotic facts to one single fact [James] |
22649 | Classification can only ever be for a particular purpose [James] |
22655 | Scientific genius extracts more than other people from the same evidence [James] |
22658 | Experimenters assume the theory is true, and stick to it as long as result don't disappoint [James] |
22654 | We can't know if the laws of nature are stable, but we must postulate it or assume it [James] |
22656 | Trying to assess probabilities by mere calculation is absurd and impossible [James] |
22646 | We have a passion for knowing the parts of something, rather than the whole [James] |
22652 | The mind has evolved entirely for practical interests, seen in our reflex actions [James] |
5987 | Alcmaeon was the first to say the brain is central to thinking [Alcmaeon, by Staden, von] |
22651 | Dogs' curiosity only concerns what will happen next [James] |
20700 | Without God's influence every operation would stop, so God causes everything [Aquinas] |
22650 | How can the ground of rationality be itself rational? [James] |
22643 | It seems that we feel rational when we detect no irrationality [James] |
22660 | Evolution suggests prevailing or survival as a new criterion of right and wrong [James] |
22645 | Understanding by means of causes is useless if they are not reduced to a minimum number [James] |
15202 | Eternity coexists with passing time, as the centre of a circle coexists with its circumference [Aquinas] |
22653 | Early Christianity says God recognises the neglected weak and tender impulses [James] |
24043 | Soul must be immortal, since it continually moves, like the heavens [Alcmaeon, by Aristotle] |