Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…
Couple Thinkers (2017)
Preface
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979)
Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…
Couple Thinkers (2017)
Vera Nazarian (1966) American writer
Source: The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
Gregory Chaitin (1947) Argentinian mathematician and computer scientist
Meta Maths!: The Quest for Omega https://books.google.com/books?id=ZACLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11. Vintage Books (2006). p. 11
Arthur Schopenhauer book Parerga and Paralipomena
E. Payne, trans. (1974) Vol. 1, p. 143
Parerga and Paralipomena (1851), On Philosophy in the Universities
Wilhelm Röntgen (1845–1923) German physicist
The New Marvel in Photography (1896)
Context: Having discovered the existence of a new kind of rays, I of course began to investigate what they would do. … It soon appeared from tests that the rays had penetrative power to a degree hitherto unknown. They penetrated paper, wood, and cloth with ease; and the thickness of the substance made no perceptible difference, within reasonable limits. … The rays passed through all the metals tested, with a facility varying, roughly speaking, with the density of the metal. These phenomena I have discussed carefully in my report to the Würzburg society, and you will find all the technical results therein stated.
Thomas Szasz (1920–2012) Hungarian psychiatrist
Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 160.
Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature
Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 1
Karl Marx book The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature
The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (1841)
Alan Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Source: Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950), p. 451.
Context: The view that machines cannot give rise to surprises is due, I believe, to a fallacy to which philosophers and mathematicians are particularly subject. This is the assumption that as soon as a fact is presented to a mind all consequences of that fact spring into the mind simultaneously with it. It is a very useful assumption under many circumstances, but one too easily forgets that it is false. A natural consequence of doing so is that one then assumes that there is no virtue in the mere working out of consequences from data and general principles.