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Philosophy Quotes

Browse 18200 quotes about Philosophy.

Philosophy Quotes

“When scientists need to explain difficult points of theory, illustration by hypothetical example - rather than by total abstraction - works well (perhaps indispensably) as a rhetorical device. Such cases do not function as speculations in the pejorative sense - as silly stories that provide insight into complex mechanisms - but rather as idealized illustrations to exemplify a difficult point of theory. (Other fields, like philosophy and the law, use such conjectural cases as a standard device.”

Source: Leonardo's Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms

“The spontaneous tendency to invoke a Final Cause in explanation of every difficulty is characteristic of metaphysical philosophy. It arises from a general tendency towards the impersonation of abstractions which is visible throughout History.”

Philosophy Causes Difficulty Finals Arise Tendencies Explanation Characteristics Visible Spontaneous Metaphysical Abstraction Invoke

Book:Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings

Source: Aristotle: a chapter from the history of science including analyses of Aristotle's scientific writings

“Philosophy does not exist. It is nothing but an hypostatized abstraction.”

Doe Philosophy Abstraction

Author:R. D. Laing

“Dialectical logic undoes the abstractions of formal logic and of transcendental philosophy, but it also denies the concreteness of immediate experience. To the extent to which this experience comes to rest with the things as they appear and happen to be, it is a limited and even false experience. It attains its truth if it has freed itself from the deceptive objectivity which conceals the factors behind the facts - that is, if it understands its world as a historical universe, in which the established facts are the work of the historical practice of man.”

Ifs Men World Philosophy Facts Happens Universe Behinds Practice Logic Historical Deny Factors Formal Abstraction Objectivity Transcendental Deceptive

Author:Herbert Marcuse

“The pursuit of truth is just a polite name for the intellectual's favorite pastime of substituting simple and therefore false abstractions for the living complexities of reality.”

Art Philosophy Reality Names Simple History Truth Is Intellectual Pursuit Complexity Polite Abstraction Pastime

Book:The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point

Source: The Collected Works of Aldous Huxley: Point counter point

“When Philosophy with its abstractions paints grey in grey, the freshness and life of youth has gone, the reconciliation is not a reconciliation in the actual, but in the ideal world.”

World Philosophy Gone Youth Ideals Philosophical Paint Grey Abstraction Reconciliation Freshness Ideal World

Book:On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy: Introductory Lectures

Source: On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy: Introductory Lectures

“Greek is a musical and prolific language, that gives a soul to the objects of sense, and a body to the abstractions of philosophy.”

Giving Soul Philosophy Body Language Objects Musical Greek Abstraction

Book:The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire

Source: The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire