Thomson Line

Famous quotes containing the words thomson and/or line:

    But chief to heedless flies the window proves
    A constant death; where gloomily retired,
    The villain spider lives, cunning and fierce,
    Mixture abhorred! Amid a mangled heap
    Of carcases in eager watch he sits,
    O’erlooking all his waving snares around.
    —James Thomson (1700–1748)

    The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)