we didn't start inquiry

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We Didn't Start Inquiry

(Sung to Billy Joel's "We Didn't Start the Fire")

 

"All is water", "All is air", "There are numbers everywhere",

apeiron and logos, Eleatic thought-block--

Sophistry, Socrates, Plato's reminiscences,

Aristotle's physics (apriori / ad hoc). . .

Hellenistic Hippo-crat--Ages Darken after that--

Abelard, Maimonides, Proslogion proof,

Avicenna, Guanilon, Occam strops his razor on,

Galileo drops the ball--inertia's set loose--

 

(chorus)

We didn't start inquiry,

But with ideas churning we can kindle learning--

We didn't start inquiry,

But with questions going we can foster knowing!

 

Descartes doubting everything, Leibniz's monads mirroring,

Locke, Spinoza, Newton, Machiavellian prince,

Reid maintains the will is free (Hobbesians compatibly)

qualia's primarily the Berkeleyan sense. . .

Hume causes Kant to wake, Kierkegaard gets into faith,

Wollstonecraft, Kapital, the Origin's proofed,

Nietzsche outwits superman, Mill's utilitarian,

Peircean pragmaticism works up new truth--

 

(chorus)

 

Russell's denotation scheme, Godel crushes Frege's dream,

Popper, Whitehead, Dewey, James, Santayana, Royce--

Novel time of Einstein, tables turned by Wittgenstein,

undetermined quantum cats that die by choice. . .

Carnap, Tarski, Reichenbach, ordinary language acts,

Ayer, Strawson, on "Two Dogmas"--gems true grue--

Anscombe, Kripke, Frankena, Dummett, Putnam, Plantinga,

Barcan Marcus, Rorty, Lewis--even me and you!

 

(Chorus and repeat)