Insofar as the most innovative instruments of the era – the telescope and the microscope – extended the range and acuity of one sense in particular, scientific experience tended to privilege the visual, with its capacity to produce knowledge at a distance, over the other senses. Even when Bacon castigated normal vision for staying on [...]
Category Archives: quotes
The Hegemony of the Eye
Also posted in academia, history, ideas, intellectualhistory, philosophy
Tagged history of science, instruments, John Poinsot, Martin Jay, microscope, perspective, Renaissance, Songs of Experience, telescope, the eye
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Zeno of Citium on Flute-Playing Olives and Harp-Bearing Trees
In his On the Nature of the Gods Cicero alludes to Zeno of Citium‘s discussion of flute-playing olives and harp-bearing trees: “If melodiously piping flutes sprang from the olive, would you doubt that a knowledge of flute-playing resided in the olive? And what if plane trees bore harps which gave forth rhythmical sounds? Clearly you [...]
Also posted in academia, history, philosophers, philosophy
Tagged Marcus Tullius Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, Zeno of Citium
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The Sleepless City
From Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi’s The Dictionary of Imaginary Places (New York: Macmillan, 1980): SLEEPLESS CITY, in northern Nigeria. The inhabitants have the singular habit of never sleeping, and have therefore no idea of what sleep is. The city is a particularly dangerous place for strangers. If a traveller should happen to overlook the [...]
Diderot on Living Marble and Self-Replicating Harpsichords
Denis Diderot explains how he can make marble come to life ‘whenever he pleases’ in an imaginary dialogue between himself and his friend Jean le Rond d’Alembert, mathematician and co-editor of the Encyclopedia. In the following passage he has just informed d’Alembert, much to the latter’s astonishment, that he knows how to make marble have [...]
Also posted in intellectualhistory, philosophy
Tagged Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert
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When Leibniz met Spinoza
In 1676 Leibniz found a pretext to visit Spinoza in The Hague, having learned that Spinoza was at work on a philosophical treatise of great importance. Spinoza showed Leibniz the manuscript of the Ethics, and the two men discussed philosophy together over several days. Although there is no written record of their conversation, it seems [...]
Also posted in history, intellectualhistory, leibniz, philosophers, philosophy, spinoza
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