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Carving nature at its joints: Difference between revisions
Carving nature at its joints (view source)
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:'''''Socrates''': That of dividing things again by classes, where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of a bad carver. As our two discourses just now assumed one common principle, unreason, and then, just as the body, which is one, is naturally divisible into two, right and left, with parts called by the same names, so our two discourses conceived of madness as naturally one principle within us, and one discourse, cutting off the left-hand part, continued to divide this until it found among its parts a sort of left-handed love, which it very justly reviled, but the other discourse, leading us to the right-hand part of madness, found a love having the same name as the first, but divine, which it held up to view and praised as the author of our greatest blessings. | :'''''Socrates''': That of dividing things again by classes, where the natural joints are, and not trying to break any part, after the manner of a bad carver. As our two discourses just now assumed one common principle, unreason, and then, just as the body, which is one, is naturally divisible into two, right and left, with parts called by the same names, so our two discourses conceived of madness as naturally one principle within us, and one discourse, cutting off the left-hand part, continued to divide this until it found among its parts a sort of left-handed love, which it very justly reviled, but the other discourse, leading us to the right-hand part of madness, found a love having the same name as the first, but divine, which it held up to view and praised as the author of our greatest blessings. | ||
::—Plato, Phaedrus, 264-6 | ::—Plato, Phaedrus, 264-6 | ||
Plato used “carving” as a metaphor for the objective reality of the Forms (extended and applied, in today’s lingo, to the transcendental truth of the universe. The theory being that the world comes to us predivided, with natural joints. The best theories will “[[carve nature at its joints]].” | |||
Modern philosophers<ref>E.g., {{author|Daniel Dennett}}.</ref>, biologists and evolutionists, of course, realise that this is pish. | |||
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*[[Service catalog]] | |||
*[[Risk taxonomy]] | |||
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