Zera Yacob was a 17th century philosopher, from Ethiopia. Like the comic says he was exiled for refusing to convert to Catholicism, and he spent the time developing a rationalist philosophy which rejected dogmas passed down through the generations, instead believing that human reason should be seen as the foundation of knowledge. While he didn't think religions were wrong, per se, he thought the particular specific dogmas that each faith were fighting over were created by man, in part because many of them seemed irrational and conflicting, so they could not have come from God. Unfortunately when he returned from exile, the new emperor wasn't much more interested in this philosophy than the last, he just wanted to purge the Catholics, like the last guy wanted to purge the Orthodox religion. Just like pretty much everywhere else in the world, the population was the same, preferring their dogmas. At least they didn't kill him though, so that's a plus.

"Am I addicted to pushing people down the stairs? Well, that all depends, define 'stairs'."

Philosophy would be a lot easier if everything were black and white.

The funniest part of their split in real life though was that Jung told Freud that he thought of him more as a father figure than a friend, and Freud thought that because of his theory how everyone secretly wanted to kill their father that Jung was going to literally kill him.

Jung and Freud were friends a colleagues for a long time, and did analyze each other's dreams, but they eventually fell out over differences in theory, mostly over their theories on the consciousness. Freud thought Jung's ideas on the "collective unconscious" were unscientific nonsense, and Jung thought Freud's ideas on how everything boiled down to sex was pervy nonsense.

Jung and Freud were friends and colleagues for a long time, and did analyze each other's dreams, but they eventually fell out over differences in theory, mostly over their theories on the consciousness. Freud thought Jung's ideas on the "collective unconscious" were unscientific nonsense, and Jung thought Freud's ideas on how everything boiled down to sex was pervy nonsense.

Look, the way science works in practice is that theories are based on the entire body of knowledge within a community, no one result can disprove...

Based on Bob Mortimer's observation that warning labels saying 'not for indoor use' mean that its fine, in his story on how he burnt his house down.

Utopian theories only have one small problem, which is that no one ever wants to live there.

Thomas More's Utopia describes his vision of a fictional land that represents the ideal way to organize a society for him. While there were many shocking ideas for the time, like the complete elimination of private property, and democratic rule, which seem to benefit everyone, he couldn't help doing what most Utopian visionaries do as well: imagining that everyone lives drab, moralizing lives. He
thought there wouldn't be any ale-houses, fashion, or really any form of vice at all, and people would be perfectly content to spend their time reading philosophy (what is it with philosophers who think the ideal life for everyone is reading philosophy? Have you considered that maybe that's just what you like to do?) Even stranger, slaves were still a large part of the society. Although he
envisioned very human criminal justice reforms (at the time thieves could be put to death, a position he argues against), you could still be sentenced to slavery for crimes. Even weirder, he said that people from foreign lands would volunteer to be slaves in Utopia, because it was so great there. Seems unlikely.