Michele Pasin / Quotes

Being amazed at the usual

It is a special kind of enlightenment to have this feeling that the usual, the way things normally are, is odd—uncanny and highly improbable. G. K. Chesterton once said that it is one thing to be amazed at a gorgon or a griffin, creatures which do not exist; but it is quite another and much higher thing to be amazed at a rhinoceros or a giraffe, creatures which do exist and look as if they don’t. This feeling of universal oddity includes a basic and intense wondering about the sense of things.

Saved 30 December 2015 / www.goodreads.com ↗

#feelings #giraffe #sense

Lamarckian vs darwinian theory of evolution

Lamarck proposed a scientific theory called “inheritance of acquired character-istics.” To understand it, let’s consider giraffes, a descendant of ancient…

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A topic can be anything whatsoever

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The Tao Of Topic Maps #words #subjects #objects #sense #topic #mind

Events are not causal to the identity of a period

Some events are closely related to the definition of a period. We mark them as “starting event” or “terminating event”. A frequent intuition is that some kind…

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Historical knowledge reconstructs possible past worlds

Another contribution of this work are considerations about the specific nature of cultural – historical knowledge and reasoning, which aims at the…

The Cidoc Conceptual Reference Module: An Ontological Approach To Semantic Interoperability Of Metadata #records #world #sense

Information does not require a conscious mind to perceive, much less appreciate, the pattern

Information is any type of pattern that influences the formation or transformation of other patterns. In this sense, there is no need for a conscious mind to…

Information - Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia #sense #mind #information #patterns #need

Ockham's logic and the mentalization of sign

Ockham's logic marks an important, though not the only important, step in the process that might be described as a progressive ‘mentalization’ of sign. The…

Medieval Semiotics (meier-oeser, Stephan) #words #logic #things #sense #signification