Plurality Quotes (4 quotes)
Entia/Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
Attributed. Described as the form as handed down to posterity by Joseph Rickaby in Scholasticism (1908), 54.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.
A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity.
A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity.
Quodlibeta (Quodlibetal Questions) [1324-13], Quodlibet 6, q. 10, trans. A. Freddoso (1991), Vol. 2, 521.
For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of Nature's work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form and incomparably richer in colour—the last quality being, in fact, so noble in most stones of good birth (that is to say, fallen from the crystalline mountain ranges).
Modem Painters, 4, Containing part 5 of Mountain Beauty (1860), 311.
In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause.
[This is often seen misinterpreted as: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts," but this is not a verbal quote by Aristotle; it is not found as a sentence like that in any of Aristotle's writings.]
[This is often seen misinterpreted as: "The whole is more than the sum of its parts," but this is not a verbal quote by Aristotle; it is not found as a sentence like that in any of Aristotle's writings.]
Metaphysics, Book 8, 1045a, as translated by Hugh Tredennick. From a discussion refuting that "The whole is more than the sum of the parts" was written by Aristotle, in Shelia Guberman and Gianfranco Minati, Dialogue about Systems (2007), section C.4, 181. A alternate translation, by W.D. Ross, is on p.182.
At the heart of science is an essential balance between two seemingly contradictory attitudes--an openness to new ideas, no matter how bizarre or counterintuitive they may be, and the most ruthless skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, old and new. This is how deep truths are winnowed from deep nonsense. -- Carl Sagan
