Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simul...taneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the history of human inquiry, philosophy has the place of the initial central sun, seminal and tumultuous; from time to time it... throws of some portion of itself to take station as a science, a planet, cool and well regulated, progressing steadily towards a distant final state.... Is it not possible that the next century may see the birth, through the joint efforts of philosophers, grammarians, and numerous other students of language, of a true and comprehensive science of language? Then we shall have rid ourselves of one more part of philosophy (there will still be plenty left) in the only way we ever can get rid of philosophy, by kicking it upstairs.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The process of education in the oldest profession in the world is like any other educational process, in that it requires time and... effort and patience; it can only be acquired by taking one step at a time, though the steps become accelerated after the first few.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In baseball there are generalists, who keep their eye on the ball and see the big picture; football is full of special-duty charac...ters who are very limited in terms of their range but have depth. Baseball represents America before the frontier ended, when there was plenty of space and plenty of time, and philosophic anarchists roamed around on verdant fields "doing their thing" with a free and reckless abandon. The game is relaxing and not particularly taxing on the players, who play many times each week. Football is tremendously difficult on the players and is so tiring that sixty minutes of clock time--which amounts to several hours of real time--exhausts them. Baseball developed when we thought nature was a limitless reservoir and we would always live in abundance. Football reflects a different world view; everything has to be fought for, resources are precious, hostile people (guards, monster men) are everywhere and in such a world you have to grab what you can.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The lapse of ages changes all things--time, language, the earth, the bounds of the sea, the stars of the sky, and every thing "abo...ut, around, and underneath" man, except man himself.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Talking about dreams is like talking about movies, since the cinema uses the language of dreams; years can pass in a second and yo...u can hop from one place to another. It's a language made of image. And in the real cinema, every object and every light means something, as in a dream.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Plato's was essentially a dualistic theory. To him, the divine ideas, the universals, the general qualities, the genera, were the ...only real beings, that, like the deities, had an absolute, independent existence. God himself was the supreme idea. The man, the animal, the beautiful, the good, the brave, and so on, represented realities, the archetypes of life of which the individuals, the earthly forms of those general qualities, as they appeared in daily life, were mere shadows and faint replicas.... Aristotle connected the two spheres by seeing the spiritual soul and the intrinsic idea as the formative principle of the body, and, at the same time, as an "entelechy," an innate, ideal goal of the individual that effects evolution. The individuals, then, participate in the essential reality of ideas. This participation becomes effective when man comprehends the ideas and their connections, when he gathers and abstracts the ideas from their multifold, individual manifestation, in short, when he thinks logically. This procedure implied the legitimacy of empirical observation, and of inductive conclusion from observed facts to abstract generalities.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The two opposing values--"good and bad" and "good and evil"Mhave waged a terrible battle on earth for thousands of years, and even... though the latter value has been prevailing for a long time there remain places where the battle is as yet undecided. It might even be said that it has been raised to ever higher levels in the process and that as a result it has become ever more profound, ever more spiritual: so that nowadays there is perhaps no more decisive mark of a "higher nature," a more spiritual nature, than being ambivalently divided in this sense and literally a battleground for these opposites. The symbol of this struggle, written in characters which have remained legible throughout human history, is "Rome against Judaea, Judaea against Rome":Mup to now there has been no greater event than this battle, this interrogation, this deadly contradiction.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedien...ts. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
When I behold the heavens as in their prime, And then the earth (though old) still clad in green,... The stones and trees, insensible of time, Nor age nor wrinkle on their front are seen;LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »