What makes defeat so painful is just the awareness that the other has won. It hurts to lose because it feels so good to win.

Mathematics is realm altogether, one that is cold, hard, objective, necessary, clear and thus utterly non-human. Nonetheless, it is enormously useful as a means, to "turn the soul around from becoming to being."

The great virtue, I think, of studying Aristotle - and, more importantly, taking him seriously as a possible teacher - is that he presents an alternative view of both science and the world.

We live in a technocratic culture. We worship at the altar of technology. Our lives are increasingly shaped by the machinations of the techies. It is vital, therefore, for all of us to think hard about the role the technical plays in our lives.

In our lives a dog is a dog rather than a former wolf, and it surely is not a cat, a difference that means an enormous amount to some people.

Even before Plato, techne was conceived as knowledge of a determinate field that could be mastered by "the expert". Such a person becomes an authority to whom laypersons should, in their dealings with that field, defer. Techne typically results in a useful result.

Modern science is a vast attempt to homogenize the universe. Aristotelian science, by contrast, remains faithful to our lived experience, and thus conceives of the world as essentially heterogeneous; composed of different kinds of beings.