We need to distinguish between a posteriori and a priori arguments. Empirical sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology are predominantly supported by a posteriori evidence, grounded in experience. By contrast, the 'exact sciences' like mathematics are predominantly supported by a priori demonstration, grounded in the pure intuitions of the intellect alone. Mathematics cannot be based on experience, it might be said, because experience can only ever reveal contingent truths, whereas mathematical speculation gives us an insight into necessity. But both a priori and a posteriori knowledge can jointly be distinguished from faith, which for present purposes we might as well just define as any other basis for belief that cannot be fitted into either of these categories (e.g. the authority of a respected individual or of a text regarded as sacred, or a private inspiration supposedly delivered only to the elect). Now, there have been many philosophers and theologians over the...

Time is a sequence of distinct moments, one after another, such that the universe has (or at least could have) a different state at each one. We understand time from the perspective of the present moment, the one at which our thoughts are occuring. On the basis of our memory, we know that there were other moments before this one, because we remember that things used to be different from how they now are, and any such change must have involved a passage of time. Our expectations lead us to believe that there will be moments of time after the present. Such a belief is not utterly indefeasible -- everything could just suddenly stop -- but it seems a pretty safe bet. Looking at things from the perspective of the present moment, it's not so very hard to conceive that either the past or the future could be infinite (though it's for the physicists, or perhaps the theologians, to decide whether either actually is). We can easily think about a time one year ago, and a time two years ago, and a time...

In the century and a half following Copernicus, when the debate around this issue was at its height, there were actually several major differences of opinion between those figures (such as Kepler, Bruno, Galileo or Descartes) whom we tend to lump together as adherents of the new astronomy. The debate between Medieval and modern astronomers is usually set up in terms of a pair of interconnected differences of opinion, over (i) whether the Earth or the Sun is stationary or moving, and (ii) whether the Earth or the Sun is at the centre of things. The Medieval view was that the Earth was stationary at the centre of the universe and the Sun revolved around it; the modern view was that the Sun was at the centre and the Earth revolved around that. Except that that's too simplistic. With regard to that notion of a centre, some people (like Bruno) were firmly committed to the notion that the universe was infinite, and they explicitly stressed that no centre could be defined in an infinite universe at all,...

Who invented the wheel? Who first figured out how to harness the power of fire? Who devised the idea of written language? The identities of such individuals have been entirely lost to history, and yet our society continues to benefit from the enduring legacy of their achievements. Indeed, were it not for the contributions of innumerable anonymous men and women such as these, there would be no such thing as human society at all. Indeed, it goes deeper than that. People sometimes talk of how, when a butterfly flaps its wings, it generates tiny currents in the air around it, which lead to others, and those in turn to others; until finally, six months later, a mighty hurricane rages on the other side of the world -- a hurricane which, but for that humble butterfly, would never have arisen. But, of course, this is not peculiar to butterflies. We all do it, every one of us, all the time. Whether through some great flash of genius, or some more idle and ostensibly inconsequential action, or even just an...

I don't really have any firm views on this issue -- though I am inclined to agree that morality need not have any particular link to attitudes to death -- but the question did just happen to remind me of the following passage from Herodotus ( Histories , 5.3-4): "The Thracians have many names, each tribe according to its region, but they are very similar in all their customs, save the Getae, the Trausi, and those who dwell above the Crestonaeans. As for the Getae, who claim to be immortal, I have already given an account of their practices. The Trausi, who in all else conform to the customs of other Thracians, do as I will show at the times of birth and death. When a child is born, the kinsmen sit around it and lament all the ills that it must endure from its birth onward, recounting all the sorrows of men. The dead, however, they bury with celebration and gladness, asserting that he is rid of so many ills and has achieved a state of complete blessedness." It's something to think...

This is actually a fascinating question. I think the answer must surely depend on the circumstances. Why, precisely, do you feel so certain that p is true? There are a couple of possible answers to this. It could be that p just strikes you as so obvious that it has never really occurred to you to question it at all. Simply in order for us to be able to live our lives and get around in the world, we need to believe innumerable things, far too many for us ever to conduct a thorough investigation into the evidence for each and every one. It's perfectly normal for us to feel no doubt whatsoever about many things, for no other reason than that we've heard them repeated over and over without ever encountering a dissenting voice. And this shouldn't be regarded as an epistemic failing: but, unfortunately, such beliefs do sometimes turn out to be false. A case which is often presented to illustrate this fact is that, back in the Middle Ages, the predominant opinion was that the Earth was flat; a...

Short answer : You say: "That is, if an infinite amount of time was necessary to get to the present time?" But to get to the present time from when ? The natural impulse is to say: to get here from the first moment. But, of course, the hypothesis of an infinite past means precisely that there was no first moment. So, again, where are we going to start counting? To get here from a time ten years ago will take ten years. To get here from a time twenty years ago will take twenty years. So, given an infinite past, we can pick a time infinitely long ago, and it will take infinitely many years to get to here from there, right? Wrong. The hypothesis of an infinite past does not mean that there was a time infinitely distant from the present. What it means is that there are infinitely many past moments of time, each one of which is some finite distance from the present. Now, this hypothesis may well be false (I take it that both the physicists and the theologians would agree that it is, albeit for...

I haven't read the Goldstein book, so I can't comment on what she might have had specifically in mind. But, more broadly, there certainly is a strong Platonic (or, perhaps more accurately, Neoplatonic) flavour to Spinoza's metaphysics. One way of characterising the general philosophical outlooks of Plato and Aristotle would be to say that Plato focussed on an eternal and intelligible reality while Aristotle was more down to Earth, instead concerning himself with temporal and sensible things. Spinoza's substance was, first and foremost, supposed to be eternal and intelligible, and, as such, it would be likely to appeal to a Platonist. When Spinoza said that God was extended, a lot of his contemporaries took him to be saying that God was corporeal: but what he had in mind was really much closer to the uncreated and immutable Platonic Form of extension than to the created and ever-changing extensions that were commonly ascribed to bodies. In many respects, Spinoza's God is a lot like the Neoplatonic...

The clue as to why philosophers through the ages have been so distrustful of passion lies in the word itself. Etymologically, "passion" is the opposite of "action". When you do something, you are active; when something is done to you, you are passive, i.e. subject to a passion. Looking at things in this way, it would seem that our passions, far from being "our true feelings", are not really ours at all. Only our actions can be properly attributed to us. The passions belong more to their sources, the things that are genuinely responsible for them: we merely receive them at the behest of those external forces. And it's a very natural thought that activity should be regarded as superior to passivity. With respect to our passions, we are like leaves drifting in a stream, subject to fortune. Moreover, many passions are decidedly unpleasant; and, even in the case of the pleasant ones, we can lose them just as easily as we acquire them, precisely because we have no autonomous control over them as we do...

I think the standards of scholarship have improved over the last twenty years (or maybe the last forty or so -- it's been a gradual development). At least in the better work that is being done in the history of philosophy nowadays, there is a far higher level of rigour than one used to find. This has probably been a consequence of the expansion in the professional field during that period. With so many more academics working on these things than there used to be, all in (friendly) competition with one another, the somewhat woolly and slapdash approach that one can find in older works on the history of philosophy will nowadays lose out in the battle for publication. And the field has definitely benefitted as a result of this new rigour. But that's not necessarily to say that we understand historical philosophers better than they used to be understood. In the academic profession, there's a lot of pressure to come up with some new insight or original interpretation, to validate the publication of...