Epstein Secrets

efore Socrates) who raised paradoxes about infinity, continuity, time, space, and motion that confounded his contemporaries and provoked no less than Aristotle to banish infinity from Greek philosophy and mathematics from then on. Fast-forward more than 2,500 years, and we’re still wrestling with infinity an

the world. "Central to the story is the mathematicians' quest to tame infinity, which begins with the philosopher Zeno of Elea (about 450 BC, before Socrates) who raised paradoxes about infinity, continuity, time, space, and motion that confounded his contemporaries and provoked no less than Aristotle to b

lly his paraphrase and generalization of Darwin’s, is not quite a truism because it carries the hypothesis that “potential” has an empirical meaning. Aristotle’s idea that potency precedes and explains act is called causality. Adam Smith’s friend and fellow Scotsman David Hume scarcely doubted causality, but

ng out what you never put in’. ? Circularity is question-begging which claims to take out as inference what it put in as assumption. Assumption that Socrates is a man and that all men are mortal does not confirm that Socrates is a man. It confirms that Socrates is mortal if assumptions are sound. Chapter

an when he was 60 years old. He’d had an astonishing life until then, of course. He’d been taught by Socrates and, in turn, had sharpened the mind of Aristotle. He’d established his famous Academy in Athens. The puzzles of philosophy and politics that defined his city’s most turbulent era had been the work o

machines? 4, The great test of Plato’s life began when he was 60 years old. He’d had an astonishing life until then, of course. He’d been taught by Socrates and, in turn, had sharpened the mind of Aristotle. He’d established his famous Academy in Athens. The puzzles of philosophy and politics that defined

they were among the earliest Western minds to try to dispel madness and superstition and sophistry. Without their logic and effort there would be no Aristotle, no science, none of the sense of our world as a comprehensible machine. The confidence to philosophize - which for them meant also to poke at the po

ilege of power with its still heavier obligations. The reality: A homicidal king. The stretched distance between ideal and reality was what Plato and Socrates thought philosophy must fill. As we consider the immense gap between where we are now - a fracturing, struggling order confronting new power arrange