Daniel Gill

“most influential philosopher of all time? At least in the Western tradition, there’s a clear victor in the race for this title: Aristotle. Although his works did not dominate the philosophical scene in the centuries immediately following his death, once they caught on, they caught on in a big way. For well over a thousand years Aristotle was not just the most widely read and significant philosopher. He was philosophy, in the sense that the study of philosophy was often simply the study of Aristotle’s works. In medieval times it was possible simply to say “the Philosopher,” and everyone would know who you meant. Only after the Renaissance would Aristotle’s total dominance of philosophy and science be questioned, and even since then Aristotle has never gone away. Current views in contemporary metaphysics and, especially, ethics, are explicitly presented as expansions on Aristotle’s ideas.”
― Peter Adamson, Classical Philosophy

“If you think about it, nearly all argumentative discussion works like this: a topic for debate is identified, and the parties to the discussion try to find some point of agreement as a basis for further argument. If no point of agreement is found, then no argument is possible. Arguing without agreed premises isn’t rational disputation, it’s just posturing and shouting—I refer you to the political debating shows one sees on television nowadays.”
― Peter Adamson, Classical Philosophy

“Science” is itself one of the greatest utopian illusions ever created by humankind. I am by no means suggesting that we should take the path of antiscience—the utopia offered by science is complicated by the fact that science disguises itself as a value-neutral, objective endeavor. However, we now know that behind the practice of science lie ideological struggles, fights over power and authority, and the profit motive. The history of science is written and rewritten by the allocation and flow of capital, favors given to some projects but not others, and the needs of war. While micro fantasies burst and are born afresh like sea spray, the macro fantasy remains sturdy. Science fiction is the byproduct of the process of gradual disenchantment with science. The words create a certain vision of science for the reader. The vision can be positive or full of suspicion and criticism—it depends on the age we live in.”
― Ken Liu, Invisible Planets: An Anthology of Contemporary Chinese SF in Translation

“Parmenides was offering a rational deduction. He starts from a basic principle—that you can have “is,” but you can’t have “is not”—and then proceeds to explore the consequences, whatever they might be. Whatever we make of his argument, this is a real quantum leap in the history of philosophy. Parmenides is not just offering explanations of what he can see around him, though he goes on to do that in the way of opinion. Rather, he puts all his trust in reason itself, and trusts the power of argument more than he trusts the evidence of his own eyes and ears. This is not to say that Parmenides is the first Pre-Socratic to offer arguments. Already with Thales, I suggested that he may have had implicit arguments for his views on water and the claim that everything is full of gods. Nonetheless Parmenides does represent something new. He tries to settle an abstract philosophical issue—the nature of being itself—with an explicit and complex deductive argument.”
― Peter Adamson, Classical Philosophy