Pure thought is an English translation of an expression originally attributed to Kant and Hegel. Their usage of the German counterpart revolved around the question of whether pure thought could exist without an object or some material. Today, more popular uses exist. The usage here is that pure thought is simply a process, another term for thought experiment.
Famous quotes containing the words pure and/or thought:
“We know of no scripture which records the pure benignity of the gods on a New England winter night. Their praises have never been sung, only their wrath deprecated. The best scripture, after all, records but a meagre faith. Its saints live reserved and austere. Let a brave, devout man spend the year in the woods of Maine or Labrador, and see if the Hebrew Scriptures speak adequately to his condition and experience.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In old persons, when thus fully expressed, we often observe a fair, plump, perennial waxen complexion, which indicates that all the ferment of earlier days has subsided into serenity of thought and behavior.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)