“
Descartes, reasoning unconsciously according to the prejudices of the old metaphysics, and seeking an unshakable foundation for philosophy, an aliquid inconcussum, as it was said, imagined that he had found it in the self, and posited this principle: I think, therefore I am; Cogito, ergo sum. Descartes did not realize that his base, supposedly immobile, was mobility itself. Cogito, I think—these words express movement; and the conclusion, according to the original sense of the verb to be, sum, ε
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― The Philosophy of Progress
― The Philosophy of Progress
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[Beware of] the fallacy of misplaced concreteness [mistaking an abstraction for concrete reality, for actuality]
In the inescapable flux, there is something that abides; in the overwhelming permanence, there is an element that escapes into flux. Permanence can be snatched only out of flux; and the passing moment can find its adequate intensity only by its submission to permanence.
Error is the price we pay for progress.
In the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting
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― Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology
― Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology
