rhoadley.net music research courses software blogs
cv music text software seminars
See also Philosophy
1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC • 200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
He who cannot draw on three thousand years is living from hand to mouthGoethe
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(c570-526 BC)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(c540-480 BC)
"Everything that exists has always existed...Nothing can come out of nothing...Nothing that exists can become nothing....There is no such thing as actual change. Nothing can become anything other than it is...
Nature is in a constant state of flux. Our senses give us an incorrect picture of the world, a picture that does not tally with our reason...He saw it as his task to expose all forms of perceptual illusion.
This unshakable faith in human reason is called rationalism. A rationalist is someone who believes that human reason is the primary source of our knowledge of the world.
(c540-480 BC)
(c490-430BC)
(500-428 BC)
(c460-370 BC)
[...imagine that an extraterrestrial scientist has visited the Earth and given us an ultra-high-technology 'oracle' which can predict the outcome of any possible experiment, but provides no explanations. According to instrumentalists, once we had that oracle we should have no further use form scientific theories, except as a means of entertaining ourselves. But is that true? How would the oracle be used in practice? In some sense it would contain the knowledge necessary to build, say, an interstellar spaceship. But how exactly would that help us to build one, or to build another oracle of the same kind - or even a better mousetrap? The oracle only predicts the outcomes of experiments. Therefore, inorder to use it at all we must first know what experiments to ask it about. If we gave it the design of a spaceship, and the details of a proposed test flight, it could tell us how the spaceship would perform on such a flight. But it could not design the spaceship for us in the first place. And even if it predicted that the spaceship we had designed would explode on take-off, it could not tell us how to prevent such an explosion. That would still be for us to work our. And before we could work it out, before we could even begin to improve the design in any way, we should have to understand, among other things, how the spaceship was supposed to work. Only then would we have any chance of discoverin what might casue an explosion on take-off. Prediction - even perfect, universal prediction - is simply no substitute for explanation.
Similarly, in scientific research the oracle would not provide us with any new theory. Not until we already had a theory, and had thought of an experiment that would test it, could we possibly ask the oracle what would happen if the theory were subjected to that test. Thus, the oracle would not be replacing theories at all: it would be replacing experiments. It would spare us the expense of runnign laboratiories and particle accelerators. Instead of building prototype spaceships, and risking the lives of test pilots, we could do all the testing ont he ground with pilots sitting in flight simulators whose behaviour was controlled by the predictions of the oracle.
The oracle would be very useful in many situations, but its usefulness would always depend on people's ability to solve scientific problems in just the way they have to now, namely by devising explanatory theories. It would not even replace all experimentation, because its ability to predict the outcome of a particular experiment would in practice depend on how easy it was to describe the experiment accurately enough for the oracle to give a useful answer, compared with doing the experiment in reality. After all, the oracle would have to have some sort of 'user interface'. Perhaps a description of the experiment would have to be entered into it, in some standard language. In that language, some experiments would be harder to specify than others. In practice, for many experiments the specification would be too complex to be entered. Thus the oracle wouldhave the same general advantages and disadvantages as any other source of experimental data, and it would be useful only in cases where consulting it happened to be more convenient than using other sources. To put that another way: there already is one such oracle out there, namely the physical world.]
David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality
(484-424 BC)
Historian
(460-400 BC)
Historian
(460-? BC)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(485-410 BC)
Man is the measure of all things. The question of whether a thing is right or wrong, good or bad, must always be considered in relation to a person's needs. On being asked whether he believed in the Greek gods he answered, "The question is complex and life is short". (Agnosticism)
(470-399 BC)
(428-347 BC)
The Republic , written 360 B.C.E, Translated by Benjamin Jowett || text version [664k]
(384-322 BC)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(Athens)
One day while he was sitting beside his barrel enjoying the sun, he was visited by Alexander the Great. The emperor stood before him and asked if there was anything he could do for him. Was there anything he desired? 'Yes', Diogenes replied. 'Stand to one side. You're blocking the sun'.
Like Heraclitus, the Stoics believed that everyone was a part of the same common sense or 'logos'. They thought that each person was like a world in miniature, or 'microcosmos', which is a reflection of the 'macrocosmos'.
(AD 121-180)
(106-43 BC)
(4 BC-AD 65)
(341-270 BC)
Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.
The gods are not to be feared. Death is nothing to worry about. Good is easy to attain. The fearful is easy to endure.
(c205-270BC)
I believe there is something of the divine mystery in everything that exists. We can see it sparkle in a sunflower or a poppy. We sense more of the unfathomable mystery in a butterfly that flutters from a twig - or in a goldfish swimming in a bowl. But we are closest to God in our own soul. Only there can we become one with the greatest mystery of life. In truth, at very rare moments we can experience that we ourselves are that divine mystery.
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(354-430)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(1098-1179)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
(1225-1274)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
Know thyself, O divine lineage in mortal guise!
Knowledge is power
(d1543)
(1571-1630)
(1642-1727)
(1483-1546)
()
(1452-1519)
(1596-1650)
Discourse on Method (1637)
"When I consider this carefully, I find not a single property which with certainty separates the waking state from then dream...How can you be certain that your whole life is not a dream?
Descarte did not think it reasonable to doubt everything, but he thought is was possible in principle to doubt everything.
It is inherent in the concept of a perfect entity that such an entity exists. According to Descarte, this is just as certain as it is inherent in the idea of a circle that all points of the circle are equidistant from the centre. You cannot have a circle that does not conform to this law. Nor can you have a perfect entity that lacks its most important propery, namley, existence.
(1632-1677)
Believed that Christianity and Judaism were only kept alive by rigid dogma and outer ritual. He was the first to apply what we call a historico-critical interpretation of the bible.
He earned a meagre living by polishing lenses.
One of the pillars of Spinoza's philosophy was...to see things from the perspective of eternity.
Ethics Geometrically Demonstrated
God is not a puppeteer who pulls all the strings, controlling everything that happens. A real puppet master controls the puppets from the outside and is therefore the 'outer cause' of the puppet's movements.. But that is not the way God controls the world. God controls the world through natural laws. So God - or nature - is the 'inner cause' of everything that happens. This means that everything in the material world happens through necessity. Spinoza has a determinist view of the material, or natural,world.
A view that we have absolutely nothing in the mind that we have not experienced through the senses. An empiricist will derive all knowledge of the world from what the senses tell us. The classic formulation of an empirical approach came from Aristotle. He said: 'There is nothing in the mind except what was first in the senses.' We have no innate ideas of conceptions about the world we are brought into before we have seen it.
(1632-1704)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)
Knowledge that cannot be traced back to a simple sensation is therefore false knowledge and must consequently be rejected.
Everyone can agree on the primary qualities like size and weight because they lie within the objects themselves. But the secondary qualities like colour and taste [and sound] can vary from person to person and from animal to animal, depending on the nature of the individual's sensations.
(1711-1776)
()
(1724-1804)
"Kant thought both [rationalism and empiricism] were parly right, but he thought both were partly wrong, too. The question everybody was concerned with was what we can know about the world. This philosophical project had been preoccupying all philosophers since Descartes.
"Two main possibilities were drawn up: either the world is exactly as we perceive it, or it is the way it appears to our reason.
"Kant thought that both 'sensing' and 'reason' come into play in our conception of the world. But he thought the rationalists went too far in their claims as to how much reason can contribute, and he also thought the empiricists placed too much emphasis on sensory experience.
"In his point of departure Kant agrees with Hume and the empiricists that all our knowledge of the world comes from our sensations. But in our reason there are also decisive factors that determine how we perceive the world around us. In other words, there are certain conditions in the human mind that are contributive to our conception of the world.
"What we see may depend on whether we are raised in India or Greenland, but wherever we are, we experience the world as a series of processes in time and space. This is something we can say beforehand.
"Kant's idea was that time and space belong to the human condition. Time and space are first and foremost modes of perception and not attributes of the physical world. For the mind of man is not just 'passive wax' which simply receives sensations from outside. The mind leaves its imprint on the way we apprehend the world. You could compare it with what happens when you pour water into a glass pitcher. The water adapts itself to the pitcher's form. In the same way our perceptions adapt themselves to our 'forms of intuition'.
Kant claimed that it is not only mind which conforms to things. Things also conform to the mind. Kant called this the Coperinican Revolution in the problem of human knowledge.
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD
"Philosophy, nature study, and poetry formed a synthesis. Sitting in your attic dashing off inspired verses and investigating the life of plants or the composition of rocks were only two sides of the same coin because nature is not a dead mechanism, it is one living spirit."
Romaniticism helped strengthen the feeling of national identity. Because Romanticism involved new orientations in so many areas, it has been usual to distinguish between two forms of Romanticism. There is what we call Universal Romanticism, referring to the Romantics who were preoccupied with nature, world soul, and artistic genius. The form of Romanticism flourished first, especially around 1800, in Germany, in the town of Jena. The other is the so-called National Romanticism, which became popular a little later, especially in the town of Heidelberg. The National Romantics were mainly interesteed in the historuy of 'the people;, the language of 'the people' and the culture of 'the people' in general. And 'the people' were seen as an organism unfolding its innate potential - exactly like nature and history. What united these two aspects of Romanticism was first and foremost the key word 'organism'. The Romantics considered both a plant and a nation to be a living organism. A poetic work was also a living organism. Language was an organism. The entire physical world, even, was considered one organism. There is therefore no sharp dividing line between National Romanticism and Universal Romanticism. The world spirit was just as much present in the people and in popular culture as in nature and art.
(1744-1803)
History is characterised by continuity, evolution and design. He had a 'dynamic' view of history because he saw it as a process. The Enlightenment philosophers had often had a 'static' view of history...Herder showed that each historical epoch had its own intrinsic value and each nation its own character or 'soul'. The question is whether we can identify with other cultures.
Herder had been the forerunner [of the romantic movement], collecting folk songs from many lands under the eloquent title Voices of the People. He even referred to to folktales as 'the mother tonge of the people'. The BRothers Grimm and others began to collect folk sougs and fairy tales in Heidelberg.
()
"the world becomes a dream, and the dream becomes reality...the path of mystery leads inward."
()
"What if you slept? And what if, in your sleep, you dreamed? And what if, in your dream, you went to heaven and there plucked a strange and beautiful flower? And what if, when you awoke, you had the flower in your hand? Ah, what then?"
()
()
(1775-1854)
"Nature is visible spirit, spirit is invisible nature...Matter is slumbering intelligence."
The world is 'in God'. Cod is aware of some of it, but there are other aspects of nature which represent the unkown in God. For God also has a dark side... The relationship between the artist and his work was seen in exactly the same light. The fairy tale gave the writer free rein to exploit his 'universe-creating imagination'.
()
"Tired of the eternal efforts to fight our way through raw matter, we chose another way and sought to embrace the infinite. We went inside ourselves and created a new world."
(-)
"Nature stems from a higher, unconscious imagination."
(1770-)
All the philosophical systems before Hegel had had one thing in common, namely, the attempt to set up eternal criteria for what man can know about the world. The was true of Descartes, Sopinoze, Hume and Kant. Each and every one had tried to investigate the basis of human cognition. But they had all made pronouncements on the timeless factor of human knowledge of the world.
Hegel did not believe it was possible. He believed that the basis of human cognition changed from one generation to the next. There were therefore no 'eternal truths', no timeless reason. The only fixed point philosophy can hold on to is history itself.
If you advocated slavery today, you would at best be thought foolish. But you wouldn't have been considered foolish 2,500 years ago, even though there were already progressive voices in favour of slavery's abolition.
You cannot detach any philosopher, or any thought at all, from that philosopher's or that thought's historical context. The world spirit has developed - and progressed - from Plato to Kant. Hegel claimed that the 'world spirit' is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself. It's the same with rivers - they become broader and broader as they get nearer to the sea. According to Hegel, history is the story of the 'world spirit' gradually coming to consciousness of itself. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the world spirit increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value.
He...called [the] three stages of knowledge thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. A synthesis will also be contradicted by a new antithesis. [Hegel] believed that history itself revealed this dialectical pattern. He thus claimed that he had uncovered certain laws for the development of reason - or for the progress of the 'world spirit' through history.
In the same way that a baby is born into a language, it is also born into its historical background. And nobody has a 'free' relationship to that kind of background. He who does not find his place within the state is therefore an unhistorical person...Just as the state is unthinkable without citizens, citizens are unthinkable without the state.
The world spirit first becomes conscious of itself in the individual. Hegel calls this subjective spirit. It reaches a higher consciousness in the family, civil society, and the state. Hegel calls this objective spirit because it appears in interaction between people. The world spirit reaches the highest form of self-realisatio in absolute spirit. And this absolute spirit is art, religion and philosophy.
(-)
top of page • 1000BC • 800BC • 600BC • 400BC • 200BC • 0BC
200AD • 400AD • 600AD • 800AD • 1000AD • 1200AD • 1400AD • 1600AD • 1800AD • 2000AD