Putnam Famous Quotes

Putnam finds in American pragmatism “a certain group of theses which can and indeed were argued differently by different philosophers with different concerns, and which became the basis of the philosophies of Peirce, and above all James and Dewey” (Putnam 1994, p. 152). Cursorily summarized, those theses are (1) antiskepticism: pragmatists hold that doubt requires justification just as much as belief (recall Peirce’s famous distinction between “real” and “philosophical” doubt); (2) fallibilism: pragmatists hold that there is never a metaphysical guarantee to be had that such-and-such a belief will never need revision (that one can be both fallibilistic and antiskeptical is perhaps the unique insight of American pragmatism); (3) the thesis that there is no fundamental dichotomy between “facts” and “values”; and (4) the thesis that, in a certain sense, practice is primary in philosophy. (Ibid.)

Chardin is famous for his synthesis of mystical religion, evolution, and ET belief. In The Jesuits, Martin wrote, “This man’s influence on Jesuit thinking and on Catholic theologians as well as on the thought processes of Christians in general has been and still is colossal.”[541]

third-century AD Christian, Lactantius, that the “Riddle of Epicurus,” a famous argument against the existence of an all-powerful, benevolent, and providential God (or gods), was preserved: God either wants to eliminate bad things and cannot, or can but does not want to, or neither wishes to nor can, or both wants to and can. If he wants to and cannot, then he is weak—and this does not apply to god. If he can but does not want to, then he is spiteful—which is equally foreign to god’s nature. If he neither wants to nor can, he is both weak and spiteful, and so not a god. If he wants to and can, which is the only thing fitting for a god, where then do bad things come from? Or why does he not eliminate them?[430] This challenge, broadly known as the problem of evil, inspired two thousand years of apologetics.

Wead, Doug. All the Presidents’ Children: Triumph and Tragedy in the Lives of America’s First Families. New York: Atria Books, 2003. Weidenfeld, Sheila Rabb. First Lady’s Lady: With the Fords at the White House. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. West, J. B., with Mary Lynn Kotz. Upstairs at the White House: My Life with the First Ladies. New York: Warner Books, 1973. Whitcomb, John, and Claire Whitcomb. Real Life at the White House: 200 Years of Daily Life at America’s Most Famous Residence. New York: Routledge, 2002. Index The pagination of this electronic edition does not match the edition from which it was created.