Liceo Classico e Liceo delle Scienze Umane / Liceo Scientifico e Liceo Linguistico
P.le B. Gigli, 2 – Tel. 071 98 10 49 - fax 071 75 72 808 / Via A. Moro, 23 - Tel. 071 75 74 204 - fax 071 75 74 308
62019 – RECANATI (MC)
OLIMPIADI NAZIONALI DELLA FILOSOFIA XXVI° EDIZIONE
PROVA DI ISTITUTO (B)INGLESE – 14 DICEMBRE 2017
I.
For if we attain the knowledge of present objects by the testimony of our own senses, whether internal or external, then, regarding objects remote from our own senses, we need others to bring their testimony, since we cannot know them by our own, and we credit the persons to whom the objects have been or are sensibly present.
Augustine, The city of God
II:
Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit,is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightlybeen declared to be that at which all things aim.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
III.
And this kind of association is not confined to men; in animals also it is very strong. A horse which has been often driven along a certain road resists the attempt to drive him in a different direction. Domestic animals expect food when they see the person who feeds them. We know that all these rather crude expectations of uniformity are liable to be misleading. The man who has fed the chicken every day throughout its life at last wrings its neck instead, showing that more refined views as to the uniformity of nature would have been useful to the chicken.
But in spite of the misleadingness of such expectations, they nevertheless exist. The mere fact that something has happened a certain number of times causes animals and men to expect that it will happen again. Thus our instincts certainly cause us to believe the sun will rise to-morrow, but we may be in no better a position than the chicken which unexpectedly has its neck wrung. We have therefore to distinguish the fact that past uniformities cause expectations as to the future, from the question whether there is any reasonable ground for giving weight to such expectations after the question of their validity has been raised.
The problem we have to discuss is whether there is any reason for believing in what is called 'the uniformity of nature'.
Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy
IV.
An astronomer used to go out at night to observe the stars. Oneevening, as he wandered through the suburbs with his whole attention fixedon the sky, he fell accidentally into a deep well. While he lamented andbewailed his sores and bruises, and cried loudly for help, a neighbor ranto the well, and learning what had happened said: "Hark ye, old fellow,why, in striving to pry into what is in heaven, do you not manage to seewhat is on earth?'
Aesop, Fables
Il Presidente della Commissione
Prof. Pierfrancesco Stagi
La Commissione della Prova d’istituto
Prof. Luigi Baldassarri, Prof. Fabrizio Borsella, Prof.ssa Antonella Cingolani, Prof.ssa Cinzia Storti
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