21
" Dado el triunfo del enfoque aristotélico tanto en el pasado remoto como inmediato, ¿no ha llegado quizá el momento de enfrentar la posibilidad, e incluso la probabilidad, de que la noción platónica del "Yo Interior" sea equívoca? Esto es, la posibilidad que no exista ese yo interior. Al buscar "dentro", no hemos encontrado nada-- nada estable en cualquier caso, nada perdurable, nada sobre lo cual podamos establecer un consenso, nada concluyente-- porqué no hay nada que encontrar. Los seres humanos somos parte de la naturaleza y, por tanto, es muy probable que aprendamos más sobre nuestro "ser interior"-sea sobre nosotros mismos, buscando fuera de nosotros atendiendo al lugar que tenemos en ella como animales. En lo cual, en palabras de John Gray <> "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
29
" There were no lawns, flowers were never patterned – instead, individual plants were placed next to craggy rocks. And there was a complex symbolism of flowers. For example, the chrysanthemum, the flower of autumn, ‘stands for retirement and culture’; the water lily, ‘rising stainless from its bed of slime’, stands for purity and truth; the bamboo, ‘unbroken by the fiercest storm’, represents suppleness and strength but also lasting friendship and hardy age.65 ‘Asymmetrical and spontaneous, the Chinese garden is a statement of faith in Nature "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
30
" Varro produced an influential encyclopaedia, Nine Books of Disciplines, in which he outlined nine arts: grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, musical theory, medicine and architecture. Later writers omitted the last two arts.79 In Rome, by the end of the first century AD, education had been more or less standardised and the seven liberal arts identified. In turn, these would become the basis of medieval education, "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
31
" If a man were called to fix the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous, he would, without hesitation, name that which elapsed from the death of Domitian to the accession of Commodus [AD 180]. The vast extent of the Roman empire was governed by absolute power, under the guidance of virtue and wisdom. The armies were restrained by the firm and gentle hand of four successive emperors, whose characters and authority commanded involuntary respect. The forms of the civil administration were carefully preserved by Nerva, Trajan, Hadrian and the Antonines, who delighted in the image of liberty, and were pleased with considering themselves as the accountable ministers of the laws. "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud
32
" John of Salisbury, an Englishman who had studied in numerous places, including Paris, placed logic central to understanding: ‘It was the mind which, by means of the ratio [reason], went beyond the experience of the senses and made it intelligible, then, by means of the intellectus, related things to their divine cause and comprehended the order of creation, and ultimately arrived at true knowledge, sapentia.’15 For us today, logic is an arid, desiccated word and has lost much of its interest. "
― Peter Watson , Ideas: A History of Thought and Invention, from Fire to Freud