Concept
First principle
Overview
concept
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
In the original texts
Passages from public-domain books where First principle is discussed.
iii), and with reason; for they considered that things flow forth infinitely from the first principle. But because some erred concerning the nature of the first principle, as a consequence they erred also concerning its infinity; forasmuch as they asserted that matter was the first principle; consequently they attributed to the first principle a material infinity to the effect that some infinite body was the first…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
names the idea; states what it is; author linked in the graph; opens on it
Why is the admitted certainty of the results of those sciences in no way prejudiced by the want of solidity in their premises? How happens it that a firm superstructure has been erected upon an unstable foundation? The solution of the paradox _is_, that what are called first principles, are, in truth, _last_ principles. Instead of being the fixed point from whence the chain of proof which supports all the rest of…
John Stuart Mill, Essays on some unsettled Questions of Political Economy
names the idea; states what it is; opens on it
An apparent anomaly, the explanation of which is, that the detailed doctrines of a science are not usually deduced from, nor depend for their evidence upon, what are called its first principles. Were it not so, there would be no science more precarious, or whose conclusions were more insufficiently made out, than algebra; which derives none of its certainty from what are commonly taught to learners as its…
John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism
states what it is; names the idea; opens on it
Nor can it be Science which takes in these, because the Scientific Man must in some cases depend on demonstrative Reasoning. It comes then to this: since the faculties whereby we always attain truth and are never deceived when dealing with matter Necessary or even Contingent are Knowledge, Practical Wisdom, Science, and Intuition, and the faculty which takes in First Principles cannot be any of the three first; the…
Aristotle, The Nicomachean ethics of Aristotle
names the idea; author linked in the graph; opens on it
I do not see the first motive and intelligent principle of the animal called man, when he demonstrates a geometrical proposition or lifts a burden. Yet I feel irresistibly that there is one in him, however subordinate. I cannot discover whether this first principle is in his heart, or in his head, or in his blood, or in his whole body. In the same way I have detected a first principle in nature, and have seen that…
Voltaire, Toleration and other essays
a chapter is titled for it; states what it is; names the idea
Philosophers who discussed First principle
- Avicenna
- Anaximander
- Heraclitus
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Thomas Aquinas
- Diogenes of Apollonia
- Xenophanes
- Thales of Miletus
- Alfred North Whitehead
- Philipp Mainländer
- Pherecydes of Syros
- Hippasus
- Atticus (philosopher)
Related ideas
- Fire
- Foundationalism
- Anaximander
- Greece
- Philosophy
- Hesiod
- Orphism
- Immanuel Kant
- Cartesian doubt
- Terence Irwin
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Anaximenes of Miletus
- Law of noncontradiction
- Discourse on the Method
- Mathematics
- Metaphysics
- University of Chicago Press
- Atmosphere of Earth
- Physics
- Plato
- Primitive notion
- Euclid's Elements
- Myth
- René Descartes
Opposing perspectives
Place in the tradition
Part of Anaximander.