Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.
Interpretation
Names should reflect the true nature of things, not the other way around.
This quote by Galileo emphasizes the importance of understanding the true essence of objects and concepts before assigning names or labels to them. It argues that names are merely human constructs and should be aligned with the intrinsic qualities of the entities they represent, rather than shaping those entities to fit our linguistic frameworks.
In practice
In a philosophy class discussing the nature of reality.
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
That sculpture is more admirable than painting for the reason that it contains relief and painting does not is completely false. ... Rather, how much more admirable the painting must be considered, if having no relief at all, it appears to have as much as sculpture!
My schedule for today lists a six-hour self-accusatory depression.
As you travel through the Middle East what keeps on striking home to me is how similar everyone is, and yet the degree to which we can find differences to fight wars over. It requires a great deal of empathy, I think, between various sides to overcome this history and live in peace.
I suppose that I inherited the same vocabulary and world view as most black Christians do, most Christians in general, to be sure. It was heterosexist in the sense that it took the heterosexual orientation as the norm from which to start as the given. And everything that fell outside of that was not acceptable.
Tis not what man Does which exalts him, but what man Would do!
The desire of gold is not for gold. It is for the means of freedom and benefit.
I mean in the South African case, many of those who were part of death squads would have been respectable members of their white community, people who went to church on Sunday, every Sunday.
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