Couple Thinkers (2017)
“Almost as soon as I began to study philosophy, I was impressed by the way in which philosophical problems appeared, disappeared, or changed shape, as a result of new assumptions or vocabularies.”
Preface
Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979)
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Richard Rorty 21
American philosopher 1931–2007Related quotes
Meta Maths!: The Quest for Omega https://books.google.com/books?id=ZACLDQAAQBAJ&pg=PA11. Vintage Books (2006). p. 11
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.
Source: The Manufacture of Madness: A Comparative Study of the Inquisition and the Mental Health Movement (1997), p. 160.
Source: The Monkey Grammarian (1974), Ch. 1
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.