12 SEP 2011 by ideonexus

 Physics Demonstrates the Principle that Everything has a ...

At first sight nothing seems more obvious than that everything has a beginning and an end, and that everything can be subdivided into smaller parts. Nevertheless, for entirely speculative reasons the philosophers of Antiquity, especially the Stoics, concluded this concept to be quite unnecessary. The prodigious development of physics has now reached the same conclusion as those philosophers, Empedocles and Democritus in particular, who lived around 500 B.C. and for whom even ancient man had a...
Folksonomies: physics philosophy classics
Folksonomies: physics philosophy classics
  1  notes

From the lecture 'Development of the Theory of Electrolytic Dissociation' by Svante Arrhenius.

25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus

 The Greatest Greeks Did Not Set Up Schools

Now the wisdom of the Greeks was professorial and much given to disputations, a kind of wisdom most adverse to the inquisition of truth. Thus that name of Sophists, which by those who would be thought philosophers was in contempt cast back upon and so transferred to the ancient rhetoricians, Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Polus, does indeed suit the entire class: Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus, and their successors Chrysippus, Carneades, and the rest. There was this difference ...
Folksonomies: classics greeks
Folksonomies: classics greeks
  1  notes

They were too busy doing science to produce useful knowledge than to waste time profiting on their ideas.

25 JUL 2011 by ideonexus

 The Greatest Greek Minds Did Not Prosthletize

Now the wisdom of the Greeks was professorial and much given to disputations, a kind of wisdom most adverse to the inquisition of truth. Thus that name of Sophists, which by those who would be thought philosophers was in contempt cast back upon and so transferred to the ancient rhetoricians, Gorgias, Protagoras, Hippias, Polus, does indeed suit the entire class: Plato, Aristotle, Zeno, Epicurus, Theophrastus, and their successors Chrysippus, Carneades, and the rest. There was this difference ...
   notes

They observed quietly and documented their observations and their truth survives the ages more concretely than the rhetoric of Plato or Aristotle.