Another lovely early example:
"[Aristotle’s ghost] freely acknowledged his own mistakes in natural philosophy,
because he proceeded in many things upon conjecture, as all men must
do; and he found that Gassendi, who had made the doctrine of Epicurus as
palatable as he could, and the *vortices* of Descartes, were equally exploded. He
predicted the same fate to *attraction*, whereof the present learned are such
zealous asserters. He said, that new systems of nature were but new fashions,
which would vary in every age..." (Swift, *Gulliver's Travels*, In Chapter VIII of Voyage III, emphasis in original)
Something like PMI appears in Sextus Empiricus Outlines of Pyrrhonism from where I suspect Montaigne got it.
ReplyDeleteJames, you may well be correct (that something like PMI appears in Sextus), and I would love a fuller reference.
ReplyDeleteBut...it is worth noting that at the point where he offers the PMI, Montaigne cites and quotes Lucretius (De Rerum Natura, V, 1276). This is interesting because it is often ignored that modern brands of scepticism also have roots in Epicurean thought.
This fact was compeletly unknown to me. You really pushed my knowledge to one layer higher. Thanks for sharing such informative post.
ReplyDelete