More specifically concerning: descartes
dreamer awake
20 April 2023, around 8.34.
Sed laboriosum est hoc institutum, & desidia quaedam ad consuetudinem vitae me reducit. Nec aliter quàm captivus, qui forte imaginariâ libertate fruebatur in somnis, cùm postea suspicari incipit se dormire, timet excitari, blandisque illusionibus lente connivet: sic sponte relabor in veteres opiniones, vereorque expergisci, ne placidae quieti laboriosa vigilia succedens, non in aliquâ luce, sed […]
word to the wise
2 June 2025, around 13.10.
In the case of most books, once we have read a few lines and looked at a few of the diagrams, the entire message is perfectly obvious. The rest is added only to fill up the paper. —Descartes (Early Writings, trans. Cottingham et al., p. 2) woh of word oðer of werc —Ancrene Wisse (f.50b […]
regularities
5 June 2025, around 18.27.
If in the series of things to be examined we come across something which our intellect is unable to intuit sufficiently well, we must stop at that point, and refrain from the superfluous task of examining the remaining items. —Descartes (Rules for the Direction of the Mind, trans. Cottingham et al., Rule 8) Trouble getting […]
dubiety
10 June 2025, around 8.09.
We are almost all blind curators, reluctant or otherwise unable to believe that things can change. We mistake the reality in which we are used to living for nature, for an order of things that it would perhaps be desirable but ingenuous to hope to change. We mistake the facade of what’s real for the […]
curiouser
17 June 2025, around 15.47.
Like alchemy and behaviorism in their time, AI projects an image of good health in spite of its difficulties. However, its feverish activity and strident claims, and the tendency of its practitioners to abandon theory and exploit current techniques, may well be signs of its crisis. —Hubert L. Dreyfus & Stuart E. Dreyfus (Mind Over […]
surdus
19 June 2025, around 12.22.
Lastly, considering that the very thoughts we have while awake may also occur while we sleep without any of them being at that time true, I resolved to pretend that all the things that ever entered my mind were no more true than the illusions of my dreams. —Descartes (Discourse on the Method, trans. Cottingham […]
passim
23 June 2025, around 13.18.
…the continual discover of fresh types of nonsense, unsystematic though their classification and mysterious though their explanation is too often allowed to remain, has done on the whole nothing but good. Yet we, that is, even philosophers, set some limits to the amount of nonsense that we are prepared to admit we talk… 1 —J.L. […]
thereof
24 June 2025, around 8.58.
Still keeping up with the morning books; only about a hundred pages to go in Ancrene Wisse, and Sallust is still the most enjoyable part of the morning (some frantic ladies praying nervously today), while Descartes is cute but becoming a bit dull (though a partially abridged version of anyone’s optics would probably be dull). […]
a novel method
25 June 2025, around 8.02.
I would also have added a word of advice about the way to read this book. I should like the reader first of all to go quickly through the whole book like a novel, without straining his attention too much or stopping at the difficulties which may be encountered. The aim should be merely to […]
Adversaria (27)
30 June 2025, around 4.32.
‘Of course one must not tax an archaic god with the requirements of modern ethics’ —C.G. Jung (Answer to Job, trans. R.F.C. Hull, p. 9) ‘Although the disruptive students turned out to be very useful pedagogically—and analytically—for their willingness to express what others might only think about fat people, I still wondered: Why did the […]
book-life
2 September 2025, around 4.43.
It is comforting to think that there can be a simple guide for how to read a book (i.e., the ‘X-ray method’). Obviously, the essay mentioned in the previous sentence is not about how to read all books, because one reads books for different purposes, but it is a fairly personable account of how to […]
no dog unturned
8 September 2025, around 14.11.
If a dog differs from a stone, it is not because the dog is composed of a body and a soul, and the stone of a body only. It is solely because the dog is composed of parts so put together that they make a machine, which the arrangement of the parts of a stone […]