“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.”

— Willard van Orman Quine , Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)

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Willard van Orman Quine 25

American philosopher and logician 1908–2000

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“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it.”

Willard van Orman Quine Two Dogmas of Empiricism

"Two Dogmas of Empiricism", p. 26
From a Logical Point of View: Nine Logico-Philosophical Essays (1953)
Context: Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.

“I hold that space cannot be curved, for the simple reason that it can have no properties. It might as well be said that God has properties. He has not, but only attributes and these are of our own making. Of properties we can only speak when dealing with matter filling the space. To say that in the presence of large bodies space becomes curved is equivalent to stating that something can act upon nothing. I, for one, refuse to subscribe to such a view.”

Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) Serbian American inventor

New York Herald Tribune (11 September 1932)

“Delacroix spoke of the Greek coin being built from the center out. Vermeer has painted in this way, according to the principles of mass... How beautifully they are drawn – Vermeer does not just make a leaf and place it in the design, he relates space and leaf. [in the painting of Vermeer: 'Allegory on the New Testament']. That drapery – it is abstract – observe how this shape [a space between a shepherd and the tree] curves around the center space while the tree counter-curves opposite it, cutting an egg shape.... the spaces on the carpet that carry no figuration are, in fact, shapes of vital importance in building the whole..”

Arshile Gorky (1904–1948) Armenian-American painter

Source: 1942 - 1948, Arshile Gorky, – Goats on the roof' (2009), p. 357: in: 'A visit to the Metropolitan Museum with Gorky', Ethel Schwabacher, 1947

“But trying to be a painter did teach me to look at the world in a very particular way—looking very closely at things, at colors, at how things form themselves in space — and I've always been grateful for that. You have all this space, and you have a figure: what do you do with it? And in a way that’s what all art is. How do we find a place for our creatures, or inventions, in this incoherent space into which we’re thrown?”

John Banville (1945) Irish writer

John Banville, The Art of Fiction No. 200 (2009)

“My form remains one, though the matter in it changes continually. I am, in that respect, like a curve in a waterfall.”

Clive Staples Lewis book Miracles

Source: Miracles (1947), Ch. 16: "Miracles of the New Creation"

“Bodies like the earth are not made to move on curved orbits by a force called gravity; instead, they follow the nearest thing to a straight path in a curved space, which is called a geodesic. A geodesic is the shortest (or longest) path between two nearby points.”

Stephen Hawking book A Brief History of Time

Source: A Brief History of Time (1988), Ch. 2

“Fred Hoyle and Wickramasinghe have argued that microorganims fill up the whole of space. One finds dust and biological molecules between stars. Why not microorganisms? They assumed in one example, E. coli filling up interstellar space and then they calculated how much the absorption of light at different wavelengths from the E. coli model would be. They showed that the extinction curve i. e. absorption curve, was precisely followed for some infra red source. So their argument was that these micro organisms must exist.”

Jayant Narlikar (1938) Indian physicist

His view on the issue of the cosmos being flooded by micro organisms.
Jayant Narlikar's Cosmology

“There is no permanent canon of forms of normative argument. Our ways of arguing about ideals are, like our other practices, the mutable products of a specific history and the expressions of our ideas about society and thought.”

Roberto Mangabeira Unger (1947) Brazilian philosopher and politician

Source: False Necessityː Anti-Necessitarian Social Theory in the Service of Radical Democracy (1987), p. 361

“Luis Valdez said it long ago: The beauty and the frustration of theater is it is one permanent long shot…You never get up close in someone’s eyes. And that kind of blew me away (while shooting) a close-up. That was all new storytelling for me, and I had to figure it out on a very fast learning curve.”

Richard Montoya (1959) actor

On how he transitioned into filmmaking in “Culture Clash’s Richard Montoya becomes a movie multitasker” https://www.sacbee.com/entertainment/movies-news-reviews/article18414926.html in The Sacramento Bee (2015 Apr 13)

“I close my eyes, thinking that there is nothing like an embrace after an absence, nothing like fitting my face into the curve of his shoulder and filling my lungs with the scent of him.”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Variant: simply-quotes Follow

I close my eyes, thinking that there is nothing like an embrace after an absence, nothing like fitting my face into the curve of his shoulder and filling my lungs with the scent of him.
Source: Keeping Faith

“Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.”

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Willard van Orman Quine 25

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