19 ideas
| 1597 | Thales was the first western thinker to believe the arché was intelligible [Roochnik on Thales] |
| 19740 | A very hungry man cannot choose between equidistant piles of food [Aristotle] |
| 3013 | Nothing is stronger than necessity, which rules everything [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |
| 21686 | Sense-data are dubious abstractions, with none of the plausibility of tables [Quine] |
| 21685 | Empiricism says evidence rests on the senses, but that insight is derived from science [Quine] |
| 398 | Each thing that has a function is for the sake of that function [Aristotle] |
| 394 | An unworn sandal is in vain, but nothing in nature is in vain [Aristotle] |
| 396 | There has to be some goal, and not just movement to infinity [Aristotle] |
| 1494 | Thales said water is the first principle, perhaps from observing that food is moist [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 16102 | Aether moves in circles and is imperishable; the four elements perish, and move in straight lines [Aristotle, by Gill,ML] |
| 17463 | An element is what bodies are analysed into, and won't itself divide into something else [Aristotle] |
| 1713 | Thales must have thought soul causes movement, since he thought magnets have soul [Thales, by Aristotle] |
| 399 | If the more you raise some earth the faster it moves, why does the whole earth not move? [Aristotle] |
| 20918 | Void is a kind of place, so it can't explain place [Aristotle] |
| 402 | The Earth must be spherical, because it casts a convex shadow on the moon [Aristotle] |
| 403 | The earth must be round and of limited size, because moving north or south makes different stars visible [Aristotle] |
| 1498 | Everyone agrees that the world had a beginning, but thinkers disagree over whether it will end [Aristotle] |
| 395 | It seems possible that there exists a limited number of other worlds apart from this one [Aristotle] |
| 1742 | Thales said the gods know our wrong thoughts as well as our evil actions [Thales, by Diog. Laertius] |