19 APR 2013 by ideonexus

 The Impact of the Printing Press

It is to the press we owe the possibility of spreading those publications which the emergency of the moment, or the transient fluctuations of opinion, may require, and of interesting thereby in any question, treated in a single point of view, whole communities of men reading and understanding the same language. All those means which render the progress of the human mind more easy, more rapid, more certain, are also the benefits of the press. Without the instrumentality of this art, such book...
Folksonomies: enlightenment media truth
Folksonomies: enlightenment media truth
 2  2  notes

It prevented authority from closing off access to truth.

19 APR 2013 by ideonexus

 Post-Modernism in Ancient Thought

In the midst of the decline of Greece, Athens, which, in the days of its power, had honoured philosophy and letters, owed to them, in its turn, the preserving for a longer period some remains of its ancient splendour. In its tribune, indeed, the destinies of Greece and Asia were no longer decided; it was, however, in the schools of Athens that the Romans acquired the secrets of eloquence; and it was at the feet of Demosthenes’ lamp that the first of their orators was formed. The academy, t...
Folksonomies: history science philosophy
Folksonomies: history science philosophy
  1  notes

With the idea that nothing is knowable, philosophy fell into a rut. Aristotle came along with the brilliant idea that everything we know comes through our senses, but failed to take that idea anywhere useful.