Magni Formica Laboris

1. There is something slightly artificial about Heidegger's choice of the entity to be questioned (i.e. ourselves). We must avoid any suggestion that the being of human beings is to serve as the model for the being of all other entities. The real ground for his choice is that what distinguishes our being from that of other entities is that it includes an understanding of being. Dasein is not an entity from which the meaning of being is to be abstracted [or 'read off'] it is what he calls the 'place of the understanding of being'. (Gorner 22) 2. However, such [ontic-type] theory building itself depends upon taking for granted certain basic ways in which the given discipline demarcates and structures its own area of study; and those foundations tend to remain unthematized by the discipline itself, until it finds itself in a state of crisis. Relativity theory precipitated such a crisis in physics... Such conceptual enquiries are not examples of theories that conform to...

1. "Until he was 11, Galileo was educated privately at home, by his father and the occasional tutor. Among his other talents, Galileo developed an aptitude for the lute (his father's favourite instrument) and reached professional standard; although he only played for amusement, the instrument remained a source of pleasure throughout his life." (Gribbin 26) 2. "The thing that looks particularly weird to modern eyes is that Bacon was trying to develop a method for doing science in a step-by-step approach that would lead even the humblest practitioner to the correct conclusions, with no need for geniuses or flashes of insight -- no room, in fact, for the imagination. He made an analogy with the difficulty of drawing a straight line freehand, which required a steady hand and a real deal of practice, and drawing a straight line with the aid of a ruler, which anyone could do. His method was to be to science what a ruler was to the drawing of straight lines, a mechanic...