p 25
Caring about what you are doing is considered either unimportant or taken for granted.
p 100
The number of rational hypotheses that can explain any given phenomenon is infinite.It is a catastrophic logical disproof of the general validity of all scientific method!
Einstein: "Evolution has shown that at any given moment out of all conceivable constructions a single one has always proved itself absolutely superior to the rest."
p 101
The more you look, the more you see.
p 114 and following pages, to the end of chapter 11
A good review of Kant's solution to the problem set up by Hume.
Similar treatments in Gaarder's Sophie's world or Saarinen's
Länsimäisen filosofian historia.
p 118
It's quite a machine, this a priori motorcycle. If you stop to think about it long enough you'll see that it is the main thing. The sense data confirm it but the sense data aren't it.
p 183
To live only for some future is shallow. It's the sides of the mountain which sustain life, not the top. Here's where things grow.
p 215
Quality is not a thing. It is an event.
It is the event at which the subject becomes aware of the object.
p 223
From:
reality
|
-------------------------
| |
subjective (mental) objective (physical)
|
-------------------------------
| |
classic (intellectual) romantic (emotional)
| |
classic quality romantic quality
to:
quality (reality)
|
---------------------------
| |
romantic quality classic quality
(preintellectual reality) (intellectual reality)
|
-----------------------------
| |
subjective reality objective reality
(mind) (matter)
p 225
What I mean (and everybody else means) by the word quality cannot be broken down into subjects and predicates. This is not because Quality is so mysterious but because Quality is so simple, immediate and direct.
p 236
Poincaré concluded that the axioms of geometry are conventions, our choice among all possible conventions is guided by experimental facts but remains free and is limited only by the necessity of avoiding all contradictions.
p 253
The difference between a good mechanic and a bad one [...] is precisely this ability to select the good facts from the bad ones on the basis of quality. He has to care!
p 255
If you want to build a factory, or fix a motorcycle, or set a nation right without getting stuck, the classical, structured dualistic subject-object knowledge, although necessary, isn't enough. You have to have some feeling for the quality of the work.
p 262
The nature of our culture is such that if you were to look for instruction in how to do any of these jobs, the instruction would always give only one understanding of Quality, the classic. It would tell you how to hold the blade when sharpening the knife, or how to use a sewing machine, or how to mix and apply glue with the presumption that once these underlying methods were applied, "good" would naturally follow. The ability to see directly what "looks good" would be ignored.
p 263
Quality isn't something you lay on top of subjects or objects like tinsel on a Christmas tree. Real Quality must be the source of the subjects and objects, the cone from which the tree must start.