Albert Camus

Ideas – Absurdity lies in the opposition between the human need for meaning, on the one hand, and the unconcerned and meaningless world, on the other. – The presence of the absurd makes the problem of suicide the most fundamental philosophical question. – The absurd does not dictate death; what gives life its value is

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Albert Einstein

Ideas – Coordinate space and time are not absolute, and the simultaneity of events is observer-dependent, but the speed of light is invariant (the special theory of relativity). – Mass is a form of energy, interchangeable with other forms according to the relation E = mc2. – Gravitational force is locally indistinguishable from acceleration of

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Alfred Jules Ayer

Alfred Jules Ayer was lecturer and research fellow at Oxford’s Christ Church College from 1933 to 1944. Then he was fellow (1944-1945) and dean (1945-1946) of Wadham College. From 1946 to 1959 Ayer was Grote professor of the philosophy of mind and logic at the University of London, and in 1959 he became Wykeham professor

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Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier

Ideas – In any chemical reaction, mass is conserved: Matter is neither created nor destroyed; only the form of the matter is altered. – Precise measurements of the weights and volumes of substances involved in experiments must be made if the researcher hopes to explain the nature of the reactions. – Precision and uniformity in

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Arnold Geulincx (1624-1669)

Arnold Geulincx was a Flemish Cartesian philosopher who was one of the proponents of occasionalism. Originally a Roman Catholic, Geulincx adopted Calvinism in 1658. He taught at Leuven and later at Leiden. His major works, “Ethica” and “Metaphysica Vera”, were published posthumously. Arnold Geulincx is best known for his work as an ethicist. His philosophy is

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Arnold Toynbee

Ideas – The proper study of history involves studying civilizations rather than nations or cultural periods. – Civilizations arise by the response of creative individuals to challenges presented by situations of special difficulty. – Progress in civilization consists in meeting difficulties by responding in creative ways that are internal and spiritual rather than external and

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Isidore Auguste Marie Francois Xavier Comte

Ideas – All human thinking, both for individual persons and for historical cultures, follows the law of the three stages: first seeking explanation in animistic purposes (the theological stage), then in abstract entities (the metaphysical stage), and finally in lawful observable correlations among variables (the positive stage). – There is a definite prder among the

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Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, on February 2, 1905. At age six she taught herself to read and two years later discovered her first fictional hero in a French magazine for children, thus capturing the heroic vision which sustained her throughout her life. At the age of nine she decided to make

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Benedetto Croce (1866-1952)

Ideas – A work of art is an intuition, an image expressive of and unified by feelings. – Art is lyrical in that it is expressive of life and feeling; it has aesthetic universally that stems from its origin in intuition. – Art is independent of all other expressions of human reason. – Philosophy and

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Bertrand Arthur William Russell

Ideas – The Theory of Types: Sentences may not be only true or false but meaningless because of inconcsistent uses of language. – The Theory of Descriptions: Existence is a property of propositional functions; it is not a property of things. – All knowledge of the world is derived from sense data. – We do

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Blaise Pascal

Ideas – The weakness of human reason leads to ultimate, complete skepticism. – The misery of man without God is the ordinary human condition. – Scientific knowledge cannot provide haappiness. – There is the need for grace to be moral and happy. – It is the nature of science that it is at best only

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Charles Bonnet

Charles Bonnet, a Swiss naturalist and philosophical writer, was born at Geneva on March 13, 1720, to a French family driven into Switzerland by the religious persecution in the 16th century. He made law his profession, but his favorite pursuit was the study of natural science. The account of the ant-lion in N.A. Pluches Spectacle

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Charles Robert Darwin

Ideas – Species are related to each other by descent, with the changes from their common ancestors being caused by the survival and reproduction of advantageous genetic variants. – Overpopulation and the resulting shortage of food create the pressure that causes organisms that have advantageous genetic variants to produce a greater number of surviving offspring

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Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

Georges Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon was the French naturalist perhaps most responsible for the rise of European interest in natural history during the eighteenth century. His massive Histoire naturelle (36 volumes) set out to organize all that was then known about the natural world. He was the source of important ideas about the distribution

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Confucius

Confucius, the great Chinese sage, was born June 19th, 551 B.C. at Shang-ping, in the country of Lu, to a poor descendant of a deposed noble family. His real name was Kong, but his disciples called him Kong-fu-tse, (i.e. Kong the Master, or Teacher,) which the Jesuit missionaries Latinized into Confucius. His father died when

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Dante Alighieri

Ideas – Love is the movement of the spirit and the primordial energy of the universe. – The energy of love is manifested in three actions. – In romantic love, the psyche moves toward the object of its erotic affections. – In philosophical love, the psyche contemplates the world of nature through the exercise of

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David Hartley

David Hartley was an English philosopher and founder of the Associationist school of psychology. He was educated at Bradford grammar school and Jesus College, Cambridge, of which society he became a fellow in 1727. Originally intended for the Church, he was deterred from taking orders by certain scruples as to signing the Thirty-nine Articles, and

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David Hume

Ideas – All our ideas are derived originally from sense impressions. – Since our beliefs are based not on reason but imagination, they cannot be rationally justified. – We cannot establish the existence of an external, physical world. – Causation must be explained subjectively rather than objectively. – There are no minds distinct from the

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Democritus

Democritus was born at Abdera. His father was from a noble family and of great wealth, and contributed largely towards the entertainment of the army of Xerxes on his return to Asia. As a reward for this service the Persian monarch gave and other Abderites presents and left among them several Magi. Democritus, according to

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Desiderius Erasmus

Ideas – Perfectability is intrinsic in human beings. – Intrinsic perfectability implies the power of self-determination and moral achievement. – The examplar of moral achievement is Jesus Christ, whose life of humility, patience, and love is open for all Christians to imitate. – Interior piety, scriptural exegesis, and study of classical and patristic writings are

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