“If nature enclose within the bounds of her ordinary progress the beliefs, judgments, and opinions of men, as well as all other things; if they have their revolution, their season, their birth and death, like cabbage plants; if the heavens agitate and rule them at their pleasure, what magisterial and permanent authority do we attribute to them?”
—MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, Essays, Book II Chapter XII, “Apology for Raimond Sebond“
“I would always have a man to be doing, and, as much as in him lies, to extend and spin out the offices of life; and then let death take me planting my cabbages, indifferent to him, and still less of my gardens not being finished. I saw one die, who, at his last gasp, complained of nothing so much as that destiny was about to cut the thread of a chronicle he was then compiling, when he was gone no farther than the fifteenth or sixteenth of our kings”.
—MICHEL DE MONTAIGNE, Essays, Book I Chapter XIX, “That to study philosophy is to learn to die“
“For how could something count as a language that organized only experiences, sensations, surface irritations or sense data? Surely knives and forks, railroads and mountains, cabbages and kingdoms also need organizing.”
—DONALD DAVIDSON, “On the very idea of a conceptual scheme”
“‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
‘To talk of many things:
Of shoes–and ships–and sealing-wax–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.'”
—LEWIS CARROLL, “The Walrus and the Carpenter“
“Those who say that “the Skeptics abolish appearances”, or phenomena, seem to me to be unacquainted with the statements of our school. For, as we said above, we do not overthrow the affective sense impressions which induce our assent involuntarily; and these impressions are “the appearances”. And when we question whether the underlying object is such as it appears, we grant the fact that it appears, and our doubt does not concern the appearance itself but the account given of that appearance — and that is a different thing from questioning the appearance itself. […] And even if we do actually argue against the appearances, we do not propound such arguments with the intention of abolishing appearances, but by way of pointing out the rashness of the dogmatists; for if reason is such a trickster as to all but snatch away the appearances from under our very eyes, surely we should view it with suspicion in the case of things nonevident so as not to display rashness by following it.”
—SEXTUS EMPIRICUS, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Bk I Ch X, “Do the skeptics abolish appearances?”
“It seems indeed to be the case that the same thing appears different to different men and different animals and even to one man according to his separate senses and conditions […] since so many different images, or appearances are produced; nevertheless, it can be inferred that there is some general cause underneath in the thing, or object, that is sufficient to produce all these manifestations. And so, however much the effects may not be in conformity with one another, there are still two things which are certain and can be proven true upon examination: one, that there is a single cause in the thing itself, or the object; and two, that there are different dispositions in the receiving faculties. […] Consequently the only task that remains is the investigation of the uniformity of the cause and the dissimilarity of the effects; and if someone should succeed in understanding this, he will be considered to have nothing less than full acquaintance with the nature of the thing and to share in the knowledge of it. For no matter how much it is objected that it cannot be stated definitely from these considerations just what the thing is like according to its nature, but only what it is like in respect to one thing or to another, it may still be said what there is in it which makes it appear to be this in respect to one thing and that in respect to another; and consequently it may be said both to be one thing according to its nature and to be this or that in respect to other things.”
—PIERRE GASSENDI, Syntagma Philosophicum, The Logic, Ch 5: “That some truth can be known by a sign and determined by a criterion”. (Excerpted in Popkin’s Skepticism: An Anthology, p 132)
“For syllogisms consist of propositions, and propositions of words; and words are but the current tokens or marks of popular notions of things; wherefore if these notions (which are the souls of words) be grossly and variably collected out of particulars, the whole structure falls to pieces. And it is not the laborious examination either of consequences of arguments or of the truth of propositions that can ever correct the error; being (as the physicians say) in the first digestion; which is not to be rectified by subsequent functions.”
—BACON, “Of the dignity and advancement of learning” (Excerpted in Popkin’s Skepticism: An Anthology, p 126)
The Cabbage Farm 