Empathy is a Circle

Empathy is a circle that may be stretched, but its elasticity is limited by kinship, friendship, similarity, and cuteness. It reaches a breaking point long before it encircles the full set of people that reason tells us should fall within our moral concern. Also, empathy is vulnerable to being dismissed as mere sentimentality. It is reason that teaches us the tricks for expanding our empathy, and it is reason that tells us how and when we should parlay our compassion for a pathetic stranger i...

 The Internet as a Brain

The brain is one of the most complex networks in the world, with more neurons than there are stars in the galaxy. Its hardware is a complex network of neurons; its software a complex network of memories. And so too is the Internet a network. Its hardware is a complex network of computers; its software a complex network of websites. There is a lot we can learn from the brain and it can tell us where the Internet is headed next. [...] In practice, the Internet is clunkier, slower, and smaller...

 Heat is a Substance

We recognize in the concept of heat which appears here a similarity to other physical concepts. Heat is, according to our view, a substance, such as mass in mechanics. Its quantity may change or not, like money put aside in a safe or spent. The amount of money in a safe will remain unchanged so long as the safe remains locked, and so will the amounts of mass and heat in an isolated body. The ideal thermos flask is analogous to such a safe. Furthermore, just as the mass of an iso- lat...

 Language is All About Classification

Man is a classifying animal: in one sense it may be said that the whole process of speaking is nothing but distributing phenomena, of which no two are alike in every respect, into different classes on the strength of perceived similarities and dissimilarities. In the name-giving process we witness the same ineradicable and very useful tendency to see likenesses and to express similarity in the phenomena through similarity in name.

 Humans are Similar on a Molecular Level

Haemoglobin is a very large molecule by ordinary standards, containing about ten thousand atoms, but the chances are that your haemoglobin and mine are identical, and significantly different from that of a pig or horse. You may be impressed by how much human beings differ from one another, but if you were to look into the fine details of the molecules of which they are constructed, you would be astonished by their similarity.

 Focus on Common Things

And first, for those things which seem common. Let men bear in mind that hitherto they have been accustomed to do no more than refer and adapt the causes of things which rarely happen to such as happen frequently, while of those which happen frequently they never ask the cause, but take them as they are for granted. And therefore they do not investigate the causes of weight, of the rotation of heavenly bodies, of heat, cold, light, hardness, softness, rarity, density, liquidity, solidity, ani...