Let us say, then, that both the realist and the antirealist accept the results of scientific investigations as "true," on a par wi...th more homely truths.... And call this acceptance of scientific truths the "core position." What distinguishes realists from antirealists, then, is what they add onto this core position ... a third alternative emerges--and an attractive one at that. It is the core position itself, and all by itself.... Let me introduce the acronym NOA (pronounced as in "Noah"), for natural ontological attitude, and, henceforth, refer to the core position under that designation.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It is a secret from nobody that the famous random event is most likely to arise from those parts of the world where the old adage ..."There is no alternative to victory" retains a high degree of plausibility.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Our common stock of words embodies all the distinctions men have found worth drawing, and the connections they have found worth ma...rking, in the lifetimes of many generations; these surely are likely to be more numerous, more sound, since they have stood up to the long test of the survival of the fittest, and more subtle, at least in all ordinary and reasonably practical matters, than any that you or I are likely to think up in our armchairs of an afternoon--the most favored alternative method.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The futility of everything that comes to us from the media is the inescapable consequence of the absolute inability of that partic...ular stage to remain silent. Music, commercial breaks, news flashes, adverts, news broadcasts, movies, presenters--there is no alternative but to fill the screen; otherwise there would be an irremediable void.... That's why the slightest technical hitch, the slightest slip on the part of the presenter becomes so exciting, for it reveals the depth of the emptiness squinting out at us through this little window.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Holidays are in no sense an alternative to the congestion and bustle of cities and work. Quite the contrary. People look to escape... into an intensification of the conditions of ordinary life, into a deliberate aggravation of those conditions: further from nature, nearer to artifice, to abstraction, to total pollution, to well above average levels of stress, pressure, concentration and monotony--this is the ideal of popular entertainment. No one is interested in overcoming alienation; the point is to plunge into it to the point of ecstasy. That is what holidays are for.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I've tried not to exaggerate the glory of athletes. I'd rather, if I could, preserve a sense of proportion, to write about them as... excellent ballplayers, first-rate players. But I'm sure I have contributed to false values--as Stanley Woodward said, "Godding up those ballplayers." The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Education must, then, be not only a transmission of culture but also a provider of alternative views of the world and a strengthen...er of the will to explore them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The shrewd guess, the fertile hypothesis, the courageous leap to a tentative conclusion--these are the most valuable coin of the t...hinker at work. But in most schools guessing is heavily penalized and is associated somehow with laziness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To pin your hopes upon the future is to consign those hopes to a hypothesis, which is to say, a nothingness. Here and now is what ...we must contend with.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »