Quote Of The Week

Quote of the Week 25 “ To be is to be perceived (or to perceive). ” ― George Berkeley   The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy summarizes:   A mind-independent thing is something whose existence is not dependent on thinking/perceiving things, and thus would exist whether or not any thinking things (minds) existed. Berkeley holds that there are no such mind-independent things, that, in the famous phrase, esse est percipi (aut percipere) — to be is to be perceived (or to perceive) .     Triggered by the following question in the book " Dark Matter " by Blake Crouch :       Note: In 1935 Erwin Schrödinger proposed a thought experiment concerning quantum superposition known as " Schrödinger's Cat " that asks whether reality itself exists in a definite state before we look. According to  Schrödinger’s Cat: The Paradox That Redefined Reality ,  Schrödinger’s point was not that he believed cats could be both alive and dead—but that the quant...

Quote of the Week 24 “The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought. ” ― Albert Einstein   Triggered by   François Chollet 's tweet : See also: https://t.co/pYUVXoRwvP — Peter Lipps (@pelimuc) May 29, 2026   For background see:  Einstein on The Essential Feature of Productive Thought , fs.blog,  Farnam Street Media Inc.   (A) The words or the language, as they are written or spoken, do not seem to play any role in my mechanism of thought.  The psychical entities which seem to serve as elements in thought are certain signs and more or less clear images which can be “voluntarily” reproduced and combined. There is, of course, a certain connection between those elements and relevant logical concepts. It is also clear that the desire to arrive finally at logically connected concepts is the emotional basis of this rather vague play with the above-mentioned elements. But taken from a psychol...

Quote of the Week 19 “ Doubt everything. ” ― Karl Marx   (his motto : " De omnibus dubitandum " by René Descartes ) “ An allem ist zu zweifeln. ” Triggered by the i nscription on the sidewalk of my & his native town  across the street of his  birthplace .

Quote of the Week 24 “ Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” ―  Sharon Begley ;   attributed   to  Carl Sagan Triggered by a @ProfFeynman  tweet : "Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known." — Carl Sagan — Library Path (@LibraryPath) March 20, 2025 While this quote is widely attributed to Carl Sagan, it is actually from a 1977 Newsweek profile of Carl Sagan written by Sharon Begley. Source:   Laidlaw Scholars