Philosophy
- Possible world, a construct in metaphysics to bring rigor to talk of logical possibility
- Modal realism, an account of possible worlds according to which they are all just as real as the actual world
Read more about this topic: Parallel Universe
Famous quotes containing the word philosophy:
“What is rational is actual and what is actual is rational. On this conviction the plain man like the philosopher takes his stand, and from it philosophy starts in its study of the universe of mind as well as the universe of nature.”
—Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)
“My position is a naturalistic one; I see philosophy not as an a priori propaedeutic or groundwork for science, but as continuous with science. I see philosophy and science as in the same boat—a boat which, to revert to Neurath’s figure as I so often do, we can rebuild only at sea while staying afloat in it. There is no external vantage point, no first philosophy.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“Methinks it would be some advantage to philosophy if men were named merely in the gross, as they are known. It would be necessary only to know the genus and perhaps the race or variety, to know the individual. We are not prepared to believe that every private soldier in a Roman army had a name of his own,—because we have not supposed that he had a character of his own.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)