(no subject)

[timelets]

[30:2]
...we must first take care  not to commit ourselves to a search, going back to infinity - that is, 

in order to discover 
                     the best method 
of finding truth, there is
               no need of another method 
               to discover such method; 
nor of a third method 
for discovering the second, 
                and so on to infinity. 

(3) By such proceedings, we should never arrive at the knowledge of the truth, or, indeed, at any knowledge at all.

[31] (1) But as men at first made use of the instruments supplied by nature to accomplish very easy pieces of workmanship, laboriously and imperfectly, and then, when these were finished, wrought other things more difficult with less labour and greater perfection; and so gradually mounted from the simplest operations to the making of tools, and from the making of tools to the making of more complex tools, and fresh feats of workmanship, till they arrived at making, complicated mechanisms which they now possess.



--- Benedictus de Spinoza. “Improvement of the Understanding.”