Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

GLOSSARY 395
ergetic:
essence:
falsificationalism:
fatalism:
first philosophy:
form, substantial:
foundationalism:
considers the nature and criteria of knowledge,
together with its sources, kinds and extent. However,
books and articles on epistemology often discuss also
the relevant topics of meaning and truth.
having to do with work (Greek, ‘ergon’).
the term ‘essence’ (Latin, ‘essentia’) goes back to
Aristotle’s account of ‘ousia’. Broadly, if something
is of the essence of X, then it belongs necessarily to
X. But not everything of this sort is of the essence of
X: e.g. to be capable of learning grammar is
something that belongs necessarily to human beings,
but does not, according to Aristotle, belong to their
essence. (Traditionally, it would be called a
‘property’, from the Latin ‘proprium’.) What is of the
essence of X is more than this: it is also something
that is of fundamental importance if we are to
understand what X is.
now usually taken to be the view that any meaningful
utterance must be one which can be falsified.
(Contrast ‘verification, principle of.) However, Karl
Popper, who drew attention to the importance of
falsification, regarded falsifiability as a criterion by
which one could distinguish a genuinely scientific
utterance from one which is pseudo-scientific.
a form of determinism (q.v.) according to which what
will happen, will happen, and there is nothing that
humans can do to alter the course of events. Although
all fatalists are determinists, not all determinists are
fatalists.
a term which translates the Latin ‘philosophia prima’.
This in turn translates the Greek ‘pr t philosophia’,
a term which Aristotle used to refer to what was later
to be called ‘metaphysics’.
a term derived from the philosophy of the scholastics
(see ‘scholasticism’) and ultimately from Aristotle. A
substantial form is that which explains changes which
arise from a substance’s own nature, as opposed to
changes which are brought about in it from outside.
The substantial form is the fully developed state of
the substance, which the substance tries to achieve.
the thesis that everything that is known has an
unshakeable foundation, in the sense that every
known truth is either one that cannot rationally be
denied, or one that can be derived from such a truth