Editorial notes: Shai documents his interpretation of Locke’s Theory of Knowledge[I] which, he explains, “is famous for being based on the principle that the mind is a blank slate” and that the mind is “gaining everything it knows by experience”. The need to acquire experience in order to gain knowledge is a principle by which Shai chose to live his life. Knowing now that this was his guiding...
A summary of intent of practicality in Bk.I[I]: (This approach is justified by the book’s opening passages; written to his son to guide him on his education, which is an achievement of life, and not merely its underlying theory). Duty, which defines what we must do with our lives, can be reduced into its essential elements: profit and honesty, and their interaction. Everything that we do...
Some essential part of stories lies in their telling. Here is a story: Kant has the idea of the sublime, whereby the aesthetic is significantly determined by its ability to transcend (and hence terrify) our senses. For instance the magnitude of a mountain or a storm – both threaten our sense of self and perception by impressing upon us fact that there is always more, forcing us to teeter...
Summary: The rediscovery of Lucretius’ text by Italian scribe (Poggio Bracciolini) and its impact on contemporary / renaissance thinking. Quote: “[With Lucretius] it became possible – never easy, but possible – in the poet Auden’s phrase to find the mortal world enough.” {Preface} “Acediosus, sometimes translated as “apathetic,” refers to an illness...
Editorial notes: In February 2013, Shai adds Evernote to his suite of repositories. This is an application designed specifically for note-taking, organising, task lists and archiving. This proves to be the ideal tool for him to better control his ever-growing research notes, stored primarily up to this point, in handwritten notebooks and documents stored in his Google drive. Between February 2013...
Thomas Aquinas spent the last twenty years of his life writing the famous Summa Theologica; a guide to the divine. The Summa included the quinque viae, the “five ways” by which the existence of God can be proved. A few months before his death, Aquinas stopped writing. When begged to continue he only said, “All that I have written seems as straw to me.” The Unmoved Mover:...
Any man who has fallen never stood securely (I poem 1) Whenever I think of the variegation of human lives I think of Boethius in his cell drafting and commiserating his own misfortune. Background: Boethius was born 476CE around the time that the last Western Roman Emperor was being overthrown. In 493 the leadership changed again as the Ostrogoths took over under Theodoric the Great, whom Boethius...
Plutarch was a priest, magistrate, ambassador, and essayist born in Chaeronea in Greece around 46CE (d. 120CE). The Greek states had already been part of the Roman Empire for two centuries by the time of his birth, and it is no surprise that at some point Plutarch became a citizen of Rome, changing his name to Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus. Plutarch (or Lucy, as I’m sure his friends called...
Taking a Fresh Look at Antiochus’ Criterion of Certainty Introduction to Antiochus With Antiochus of Ascalon (c.125-88 BCE), Platonism took a dive back to its roots – or at least, it claimed to do so. Antiochus’ teacher was Philo of Larissa, who was the last of the Academics who were associated with the actual Academy of Plato. Antiochus is considered to be the first major philosopher of...
In a nutshell, the Antikythera Mechanism is the thing that should not be. It is a mechanical artifact discovered around a hundred years ago at the bottom of the ocean, dated to about a hundred years before the common era, and which uses gears and other impossibilities to predict astronomical phenomenon and align calendars. Its level of sophistication wouldn’t be approached until the...
