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“Physical objects are conceptually imported into the situation as convenient intermediaries not by definition in terms of experience, but simply as irreducible posits comparable, epistemologically, to the gods of Homer . . . For my part I do, qua lay physicist, believe in physical objects and not in Homer's gods; and I consider it a scientific error to believe otherwise. But in point of epistemological footing, the physical objects and the gods differ only in degree and not in kind. Both sorts of entities enter our conceptions only as cultural posits.”
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“I don't know why we are here, but I'm pretty sure that it is not in order to enjoy ourselves.”
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“Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck
passing by a music school?
Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?
What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?”
― Silence: Lectures and Writings
passing by a music school?
Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?
What if the ones inside can't hear very well, would that change my question?”
― Silence: Lectures and Writings
“From even the greatest of horrors irony is seldom absent.”
― Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
― Tales of H.P. Lovecraft
“The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.”
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Laurance’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Laurance’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
6,063 books
|
34 friends
91 books
|
52 friends
1,295 books
|
5,373 friends
391 books
|
44 friends
8,290 books
|
428 friends
86 books
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229 friends
1,079 books
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500 friends
158 books
|
382 friends
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