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“Do not squander time,” said Benjamin Franklin, “for that is the stuff life is made of.” Our consciousness, even more than it is posted in space, unrolls in time. I can imagine abolishing space from my awareness—if, say, I were floating in a sensory deprivation tank or became blind and paralyzed—while still continuing…
What was so exciting about Manchester? Disraeli with his acute political and historical instinct understood that Manchester had done something unique and revolutionary. Only he was wrong to call it science. What Manchester had done was to invent the Industrial Revolution, a new style of life and work which began in…
agalmics: A form of economics concerning the "study and practice of the production and allocation of non-scarce goods," primarily via free-market trading, open-source initiatives, and flexible standards for intellectual property. Consult Robert Levin's "The Marginalization of Scarcity" for more information…
We should not retreat to a curriculum advisory committee and ask, “Now where should we fit this topic into the already overloaded curriculum?” Although we cannot discard all the fragmented subjects in our present school system and start from scratch, we can and should ask all teachers to stretch their subjects to meet…
Philosophers were always looking for new handles on the universe—new similes, new metaphors, new analogies. Despite their scorn for those who cast the Creator of the Universe in man's image, the theologians never ceased to scrutinize man's own handiwork as their clues to God. Now man was a proud clockmaker, a maker of…
At least mathematicians try not to contradict one another. Not so philosophers! They are all "great"... and all in total disagreement! "Studying philosophy" really means gorging yourself on a stew of every idea imaginable. A Platonist thinks appearance is but a bad copy of reality... While an Aristotelian puts all his…
The heavens are enriched for the man of science with new stars, and he applies his knowledge to determine and foretel with accuracy their positions and movements. Natural philosophy, gradually delivered from the vague explanations of Descartes, in the same manner as it before was disembarrassed from the absurdities of…
Rational mechanics soon became a vast and profound science. The true laws of the collision of bodies, respecting which Descartes was deceived, were at length known. Huyghens discovered the laws of circular motions; and at the same time he gives a method of determining the radius of curvature for every point of a given…
The transition from the epoch we have been considering to that which follows, has been distinguished by three extraordinary personages, Bacon, Galileo, and Descartes. Bacon has revealed the true method of studying nature, by employing the three instruments with which she has furnished us for the discovery of her…
Break the chains of your prejudices and take up the torch of experience, and you will honour nature in the way she deserves, instead of drawing derogatory conclusions from the ignorance in which she has left you. Simply open your eyes and ignore what you cannot understand, and you will see that a labourer whose mind…
CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito, ergo sum—whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito ergo cogito sum—'I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;' as…
His metaphysics, as ingenious and new as his physics, had approximately the same fate; and it is with approximately the same reasons that we can justify it. For such is today the fortune of this great man that after having had countless followers he is practically reduced to a few apologists. He was without doubt…
These are the principal geniuses that the human mind must regard as its masters and for whom the Greeks would have erected statues, even if they were obliged to make more space by demolishing the monuments of some conquerors.
There have always been two ways of looking for truth. One is to find concepts which are beyond challenge, because they are held by faith or by authority or the conviction that they are self-evident. This is the mystic submission to truth which the East has chosen, and which dominated the axiomatic thought of the…