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Category: Ideas

Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs

Our most abstract concepts emerged as solutions to our needs

Matthieu Queloz writes: ‘Ideas, Mr Carlyle, ideas, nothing but ideas!’ scoffed a hard-headed businessman over dinner with Thomas Carlyle, the Victorian essayist and historian of the French Revolution. The businessman had had enough of Carlyle’s endless droning on about ideas – what do ideas matter anyway? Carlyle shot back: ‘There was once a man called Rousseau who wrote a book containing nothing but ideas. The second edition was bound in the skins of those who laughed at the first.’ Ideas…

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The spectacular originality of Coleridge’s theory of ideas

The spectacular originality of Coleridge’s theory of ideas

Peter Cheyne writes: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) stands tall in the cultural pantheon for his poetry. It’s less well known that in his own lifetime, and in the decades following his death, this canonical poet had an equal reputation as a philosopher. His published works containing much of his philosophical prose span from The Statesman’s Manual (1816), which set out his theory of imagination and symbolism; Biographia Literaria (1817), one of the great and founding works of literary criticism; The…

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Hume believed we were nothing more or less than human

Hume believed we were nothing more or less than human

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Julian Baggini writes: Socrates died by drinking hemlock, condemned to death by the people of Athens. Albert Camus met his end in a car that wrapped itself around a tree at high speed. Nietzsche collapsed into insanity after weeping over a beaten horse. Posterity loves a tragic end, which is one reason why the cult of David Hume, arguably the greatest philosopher the West has ever produced, never took off. While Hume was lying aged 65 on his deathbed at…

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A history of precision

A history of precision

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James Gleick writes: Scientists and engineers recognize an elusive but profound difference between precision and accuracy. The two qualities often go hand in hand, of course, but precision involves an ideal of meticulousness and consistency, while accuracy implies real-world truth. When a sharpshooter fires at a target, if the bullets strike close together—clustered, rather than spread out—that is precise shooting. But the shots are only accurate if they hit the bull’s eye. A clock is precise when it marks the…

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Thinking about emergence

Thinking about emergence

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Paul Humphreys writes: If you construct a Lego model of the University of London’s Senate House – the building that inspired the Ministry of Truth in George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four – the Lego blocks themselves remain unchanged. Take apart the structure, reassemble the blocks in the shape of the Great Pyramid of Giza or the Eiffel Tower, and the shape, weight and colour of the blocks stay the same. This approach, applied to the world at large, is known…

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Bees may understand zero, a concept that took humans millennia to grasp

Bees may understand zero, a concept that took humans millennia to grasp

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Kate Keller writes: As a mathematical concept, the idea of zero is relatively new in human society—and indisputably revolutionary. It’s allowed humans to develop algebra, calculus and Cartesian coordinates; questions about its properties continue to incite mathematical debate today. So it may sound unlikely that bees—complex and community-based insects to be sure, but insects nonetheless—seem to have mastered their own numerical concept of nothingness. Despite their sesame-seed-sized brains, honey bees have proven themselves the prodigies of the insect world. Researcher…

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Reflective and unreflective atheists

Reflective and unreflective atheists

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Patrick Freyne writes: John Gray is a self-described atheist who thinks that prominent advocates of atheism have made non-belief seem intolerant, uninspiring and dull. At the end of the first chapter of his new book, Seven Types of Atheism, he concludes that “the organised atheism of the present century is mostly a media phenomenon and best appreciated as a type of entertainment”. He laughs when I remind him of this sick burn. “I wrote the book partly as a riposte…

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