Abstract
For some historians, to understand everything is to pardon everything. For others, like Lord Acton, history is not only a judge, but a hanging judge. But when everything is said and done — and read and understood — surely the most appropriate key for the music of Clio, the Muse of History, is irony. Any such irony can scarcely be sharper than the one created by a juxtaposition of the following two quotes. (I call your attention especially to the italicized sentences and to their role in the overall argument. These italics are all mine.)
Originally delivered as Professor Hintikka’s Presidential Address at the Fiftieth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association, Pacific Division, in Berkeley, Calif., March 26, 1976.
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Notes
Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass. 1936.
See G. Boas and A. O. Lovejoy, Primitivism and Related Ideas in Antiquity, John Hopkins University Press, Baltimore 1935.
Cf. my paper ‘Leibniz on Plenitude, Relations, and “the Reign of Law” ’, reprinted in this volume, pp. 259–286.
It is not a continuous linear change, either. Duns Scotus was freer from the fetters of the Principle than most renaissance philosophers, and the revival of Aristotelianism in the seventeenth century academic philosophy seems to have encouraged thinkers to adopt the Principle of Plenitude in some form or other.
See John Murdoch, `Philosophy and the Enterprise of Science in the Later Middle Ages’, in Yehuda Elkana, (ed.), The Interaction Between Science and Philosophy, Humanities Press, New York 1974, pp. 51–74.
Time and Necessity. Studies in Aristotle’s Theory of Modality,Clarendon Press, Oxford 1973; partially reprinted in this volume, pp. 57–72.
See his paper `Plato on Plenitude’ in Ajatus 29 (1967), 12–50. (Even though Maula fails to mention it, much of that paper was written by me.) Recently, Michael D. Rohr has argued for the contrary conclusion, as witnessed by his contribution to the present volume. In spite of his learned and able arguments, I remain critical of Lovejoy’s bland attribution of the Principle of Plenitude to Plato. Even if Rohr is right, Lovejoy is oversimplifying Plato’s position, especially the role of the demiurge.
See Time and Necessity and cf. Aristotle on Modality and Determinism,North-Holland, Amsterdam 1977.
See his contribution to the present volume and the further references given there.
Cf. Time and Necessity,last chapter, and the literature referred to there.
The role of the `statistical’ model of modal and epistemic concepts in Descartes has recently been pointed out by John Etchemendy (forthcoming).
Cf. my `Quin on Quantifying In’ in The Intentions of Intentionality,D. Reidel, Dordrecht 1975.
I.e., in the year 1977.
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Hintikka, J. (1980). Gaps in the Great Chain of Being: An Exercise in the Methodology of the History of Ideas. In: Knuuttila, S. (eds) Reforging the Great Chain of Being. Synthese Historical Library, vol 20. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7662-8_1
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