Aristotle, as a philosopher, is in many ways very different from all his predecessors. He is the first to write like a professor: ...his treatises are systematic, his discussions are divided into heads, he is a professional teacher, not an inspired prophet. His work is critical, careful, pedestrian, without any trace of Bacchic enthusiasm. The Orphic elements in Plato are watered down in Aristotle, and mixed with a strong dose of common sense; where he is Platonic, one feels that his natural temperament has been overpowered by the teaching to which he has been subjected. He is not passionate, or in any profound sense religious. The errors of his predecessors were the glorious errors of youth attempting the impossible; his errors are those of age which cannot free itself of habitual prejudices. He is best in detail and in criticism; he fails in large construction, for lack of fundamental clarity and Titanic fire.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
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 »
Science is the knowledge of many, orderly and methodically digested and arranged, so as to become attainable by one. The ...>knowledge of reasons and their conclusions constitutes abstract, that of causes and their effects, and of the laws of nature, natural science.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The whole of natural theology ... resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous proposition, That the cause or causes... of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A person, seasoned with a just sense of the imperfections of natural reason, will fly to revealed truth with the greatest avidity:... while the haughty Dogmatist, persuaded that he can erect a compleat system of Theology by the mere help of philosophy, disdains any further aid, and rejects this adventitious instructor.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object, those qualit...ies, with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice or good-will to every thing, that hurts or pleases us.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Certainly the philosopher of 'possible worlds' must take care that his technical apparatus not push him to ask questions whose mea...ningfulness is not supported by our original intuitions of possibility that gave the apparatus its point.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Thus I believe that without doing violence to the ancient doctrine of the Chinese, one can say that the Li has been brought by the... perfection of its nature to choose, from several possibilities, the most appropriate; and that by this means it has produced the Ki (Ch'i) or matter with dispositions such that all the rest has come about by natural propensities, in the same way that Monsieur Descartes claims to bring forth the present order of the world as a consequence of a small number of initially generated assumptions. Thus the Chinese, far from being blameworthy, merit praise for their ideas of things being created by their natural propensity and by a pre-established harmony.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Let us not underrate the value of a fact; it will one day flower in a truth. It is astonishing how few facts of importance are add...ed in a century to the natural history of any animal. The natural history of man himself is still being gradually written.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Logic recognizes a principal division in class names, according as these are the names of objects which agree with each other and ...differ from other objects in a very large and indefinite number of particulars or attributes, or are the names of objects which agree only in a few and a definite number of attributes. The former are the names of "real kinds," and include the names of natural species, as man, horse, etc., and of natural genera, as whale, oak, etc.... For examples of names that are not the names of "real kinds," we may instance such objects as those that are an inch in length, or in breath, or are colored black, or are square, or (combining these particulars) such objects as black square inches.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »