20 ideas
1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
17070 | Coherence is consilience, simplicity, analogy, and fitting into a web of belief [Smart] |
17072 | We need comprehensiveness, as well as self-coherence [Smart] |
3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
17073 | I simply reject evidence, if it is totally contrary to my web of belief [Smart] |
17077 | The height of a flagpole could be fixed by its angle of shadow, but that would be very unusual [Smart] |
17078 | Universe expansion explains the red shift, but not vice versa [Smart] |
17074 | Explanations are bad by fitting badly with a web of beliefs, or fitting well into a bad web [Smart] |
17076 | Deducing from laws is one possible way to achieve a coherent explanation [Smart] |
17061 | Explanation of a fact is fitting it into a system of beliefs [Smart] |
17071 | An explanation is better if it also explains phenomena from a different field [Smart] |
17062 | If scientific explanation is causal, that rules out mathematical explanation [Smart] |
17075 | Scientific explanation tends to reduce things to the unfamiliar (not the familiar) [Smart] |
15675 | We don't condemn people for being bad at reasoning [Finlayson] |
15674 | One can universalise good advice, but that doesn't make it an obligation [Finlayson] |
15662 | The 'culture industry' is an advertisement for the way things are [Finlayson] |
1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
17063 | Unlike Newton, Einstein's general theory explains the perihelion of Mercury [Smart] |
1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |