Philip Stokes > Quotes

“On the one hand philosophy is like any other human endeavour, situated within and confined by the context of its day and yet on the other hand, it tries to wrestle with and expand the boundaries of current thought.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Likewise, just as there are many men, all men are made in the image of the universal ‘form of man’. The influence of this idea on later Christian thought, in which man is made in the image of God, is only one of many ways in which Plato had a direct influence on Christian theology.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Peirce’s foundational, scientific metaphysics accordingly begins with phenomenology, the way things are presented to us in experience. He is particularly concerned with the difference between belief and doubt.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Thales was the first thinker to try to account for the nature of the world without appealing to the wills and whims of anthropomorphic, Homerian gods. Rather, he sought to explain the many diverse phenomena he observed by appealing to a common, underlying principle, an idea that is still germane to modern scientific method.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Epicurus rejected the idea of anthropomorphic gods who were cognisant of human affairs. Indeed, he was the first to formulate an argument that later became called ‘the problem of evil’ for those who maintain that there is an all-loving, all-knowing, all-powerful deity. Noting the many ills suffered by people in the world, Epicurus complained, ‘Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then how can there be evil?’ Even so, Epicurus was not an atheist, since he believed there were gods, but that these gods had no interest in human affairs, which would only have distracted them from their own pursuit of pleasure in contemplation.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Arnauld is a firm rationalist. In The Art of Thinking, he proclaims that the main aim of logic is to inculcate clear thinking. Thus he writes, ‘nothing is more to be esteemed than aptness in discerning the true from the false. Other qualities of mind are of limited use, but precision of thought is essential to every aspect and walk of life. To distinguish truth from error is difficult not only in the sciences but also in the everyday affairs men engage in and discuss. Men are everywhere confronted with alternative routes – some true and others false – and reason must choose between them. Who chooses well has a sound mind, who chooses ill a defective one. Capacity for discerning the truth is the most important measure of minds.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“The greatest danger to both society and the individual, we learn from Socrates, is the suspension of critical thought. Loved”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Interestingly, Spinoza’s philosophy is both mystical, rational and theistic. Yet he was excommunicated from the Jewish community for his views, denounced as an atheist by Christians and declared so wicked that at one time his books were publicly burnt. Leibniz, who owes a great deal to him, rarely acknowledges the debt. Despite the rigour and integrity of his work, Spinoza remains one of the lesser studied and least regarded of all the rationalist philosophers.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“It is up to the individual to choose the life they think best French”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Sartre intends to convey the view that man first exists without purpose or definition, finds himself in the world and only then, as a reaction to experience, defines the meaning of his life. It”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Despite the inherent difficulty of philosophy its value should not be underestimated. As recent discoveries in genetics and biotechnology have shown, it is impossible to know what to do with scientific discoveries without reflecting on what sort of a society we want to live in and what duties we owe each other, our descendants and the environment. Answers to all these questions depend on what conception we have of ourselves as human beings and what we think that means for the best way to live. None of these issues are questions for science or for art, but for philosophy.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Falsehood is merely limitation, the incomplete understanding of the absolute. This entails that, for Hegel, falsified scientific theories are not in themselves wholly wrong, but merely do not tell the whole story. They are limited conceptions of a more all-embracing truth.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Great is he, who conquers the frightful. Sublime is he, who, while succumbing to it, fears it not’.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“An upshot of Mach’s philosophy of science, and one he does not fail to notice himself, is that the unobservable ‘posits’ of our scientific theories, items such as atoms, electrons, fields and waves, cannot be accorded any substantial existence. Indeed, Mach says to accord any material status to such concepts is to invoke ‘the sham ideas of the old metaphysics’. The idea is resurgent in Quine, who claims the posits of our physical theory have no greater epistemological footing than ‘Homer’s gods’.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“The modern information age would never have been possible without the work of the great logician Frege. Female suffrage was taken seriously only after Wollstonecraft. The Enlightenment stood in need of a Voltaire, Einstein needed Newton and Newton, in turn, relied on Aristotle. The history of social, political and technological change is inextricably bound to the history of thought.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Galileo’s findings attracted such sharp criticism, both from secular and ecclesiastical quarters that he felt compelled to offer, both in his defence and in reply to his critics, the Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina in 1615. In the Letter, Galileo argues that scientific and theological matters should not be confused. Science could not cast doubt on religious doctrine, only strengthen it. Nonetheless he was condemned by the Inquisition, first in private communication in 1616 and later in 1633, when he publicly recanted.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“what proof is there that dupery through hope is so much worse than dupery through fear?”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“The history of social, political and technological change is inextricably bound to the history of thought.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“In answer to Zeno, Democritus held that whilst atoms could be geometrically divided, it is only matter containing spaces – literally, parts of the void between the atoms – that can be physically divided. An atom itself could not be physically divided since it is perfectly solid, completely excluding the void, and thereby indivisible.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Aristotle made much of observation and strict classification of data in his studies. For this reason he is often considered as the father of empirical science and scientific method.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“but combined and justified it with a brand of therapeutic hedonism, in which the anxieties of contemporary life were salved by the pursuit of pleasure”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Occam’s Razor’ (so-called because the principle encourages one to cut out unnecessary complications from theory) is ultimately aesthetic: why postulate two things when one will do? Or as Occam is said to have put it, ‘It is vain to do with more what can be done with fewer’.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Marcus Aurelius 121–180 ‘The happiness of your life depends on the quality of your thoughts’ Adopted”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“The history of social, political and technological change is inextricably bound to the history of thought. To”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Nevertheless, Spinoza does find a way of making room for a kind of freedom, though it is not of the sort that philosophers are used to. Each individual, says Spinoza, is a localised concentration of the attributes of reality, really a quasi-individual, since the only true individual is the universe in totality. Insofar as the quasi-individual is ruled by his emotions, he is unfree and at the mercy of finite understanding. To become free, the individual must, by means of rational reflection, understand the extended causal chain that links everything as one. To become aware of the totality of the universe is to be freed, not from causal determinism, but from an ignorance of one’s true nature.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“when real doubt ensues it disrupts our usual behavioural patterns.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Spinoza is more than happy with this conclusion: he is a thorough-going determinist ‘Experience tells us clearly that men believe themselves to be free simply because they are conscious of their actions and unconscious of the causes whereby these actions are determined; further, it is plain that the dictates of the mind are simply another name for the appetites that vary according to the varying state of the body.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“Durkheim goes on to argue that the cult of the individual has been misconstrued as the cult of the self-interested ego. Durkheim maintains that a collection of purely egotistical individuals could not form a society at all, that indeed, there has to be the recognition of others’ interests, expressed in ‘moral individualism’ by the importance of equality and rights.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“According to Democritus, the fundamental nature of the universe consists of indivisible atoms in constant motion and travelling in an infinite void. Material objects are temporary concatenations of these atoms, made and destroyed as atoms come together or disperse according to natural forces, whilst the atoms themselves are eternal and indestructible.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers

“This problem, of the relationship between the void and matter, or in philosophical parlance, on the ontological status of space, would reappear much later in the protracted debates between Isaac Newton – who would uphold Democritus’ idea of absolute space as a kind of receptacle for matter – and Leibniz, who thought of space as merely a relation between physical objects. The history of the debate is interesting in its own right because, until Einstein, the general opinion amongst philosophers and scientists was that Democritus and Newton were correct, whereas it now seems that Parmenides, Leibniz and Einstein have the better of the argument.”
― Philip Stokes, Philosophy 100 Essential Thinkers