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> The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by
by Double_Cast 10y ago
> The reason Aristotle didn't get anywhere in the Metaphysics was partly that he set off with contradictory aims: to explore the most abstract ideas, guided by the assumption that they were useless. He was like an explorer looking for a territory to the north of him, starting with the assumption that it was located to the south.
> And since his work became the map used by generations of future explorers, he sent them off in the wrong direction as well.
http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html
- woodandsteel 10y agoI have a lot of respect for PG, but boy, is he off track on that. Aristotle was highly specific and highly empirical. His ethics, for instance, is an elaborate study of the various ways individual go right or wrong in their decisions. His politics was based on extensive studies of the constitutions and political histories of nearly a hundred Greek states. And of course there was his biology, based on empirical studies of over a hundred different animal species. And as for his physics, according to this astounding article by Carlo Rovelli (yes, that Carlo Rovelli), his physics is accurate for the phenomena he was studying. Rovelli even converts his ideas into equations. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057v2.pdf