"Concerning sound and color, Plato says "both together are two, and each of them is one." ...There is here a mistake vary analogous to that concerning existence. The predicate "one" is not applicable to things, but only to unit classes. We can say "the earth has one satellite," but it is a syntactical error to say "the moon is one." For what can such an assertion mean? You may just as well say "the moon is many," since it has many parts. ...to argue "the earth has one satellite, namely the moon, therefore the moon is one" is as bad as to argue "the Apostles were twelve; Peter was an Apostle; therefore Peter was twelve.""
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
p. 157.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosophy
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
A History of Western Philosophy
359 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by A History of Western Philosophy →
Related Quotes
"Heraclitus himself, for all his belief in change, allowed something everlasting. The conception of eternity (as oppos…"
"Passing from that small to the large, astronomy no longer allows us to regard the heavenly bodies as everlasting."
"A dose of disaster is likely to bring men's hopes back to their older super-terrestrial forms: if life on earth is di…"
"He [Anaxagoras] rejected necessity and chance as giving the origins of things; nevertheless there was no "Providence"…"
"Science, like philosophy, has sought to escape from the doctrine of perpetual flux by finding some permanent substrat…"
"Nothing daunted, the physicists invented new and smaller units, called electrons and protons, out of which atoms were…"
"The search for something permanent is one of the deepest of instincts leading men to philosophy. It is derived, no do…"
"The cheerfulness of the nineteenth century turned men against these static conceptions, and modern liberal theology b…"
"Philosophically inclined mystics, unable to deny that whatever is in time is transitory, have invented a conception o…"
"The doctrine of perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science, as we have seen, can do nothing to …"