"[T]he first philosophers, in investigating the truth and the nature of things, wandered, as if led by ignorance, into a certain... path. Hence, they say that no being is either generated or corrupted, because it is necessary that what is generated should be generated either from being or non-being: but both these are impossible; for neither can being be generated, since it already is; and from nothing, nothing can be generated... And thus... they said that there were not many things, but that being alone had a subsistence. ...the ancient philosophers ...through this ignorance added so much to their want of knowledge, as to fancy that nothing else was generated or had a being; but they subverted all generation."
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Philosophers from GreecePolymathsNatural philosophersMathematicians from GreeceBiologists from Greece
Original Language: English
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Book I, Ch. IX, pp. 73-76.
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aristotle
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Aristotle
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