Plurality Quotes (5 quotes)
Entia/Essentia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily.
Attributed. Described as the form as handed down to posterity by Joseph Rickaby in Scholasticism (1908), 54.
Pluralitas non est ponenda sine necessitate.
A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity.
A plurality (of reasons) should not be posited without necessity.
Quodlibeta (Quodlibetal Questions) [1324-13], Quodlibet 6, q. 10, trans. A. Freddoso (1991), Vol. 2, 521.
For a stone, when it is examined, will be found a mountain in miniature. The fineness of Nature’s work is so great, that, into a single block, a foot or two in diameter, she can compress as many changes of form and structure, on a small scale, as she needs for her mountains on a large one; and, taking moss for forests, and grains of crystal for crags, the surface of a stone, in by far the plurality of instances, is more interesting than the surface of an ordinary hill; more fantastic in form and incomparably richer in colour—the last quality being, in fact, so noble in most stones of good birth (that is to say, fallen from the crystalline mountain ranges).
Modern Painters, 4, Containing part 5 of Mountain Beauty (1860), 311.
In all things which have a plurality of parts, and which are not a total aggregate but a whole of some sort distinct from the parts, there is some cause.
[Often paraphrased as: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.]
[Often paraphrased as: The whole is more than the sum of its parts.]
Metaphysics, Book 8, 1045a, as translated by Hugh Tredennick. The subject quote is often seen misinterpreted as, “The whole is more than the sum of its parts,” but this is not a verbal quote by Aristotle; it is not found as a sentence like that in any of Aristotle's writings. For a discussion refuting that the wording of the shorter paraphrase was written by Aristotle, see Shelia Guberman and Gianfranco Minati, Dialogue about Systems (2007), section C.4, 181. An alternate translation, by W.D. Ross, is on p.182.
The plurality that we perceive is only an appearance; it is not real.
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In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
