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    Posted: 04-Nov-2008 at 18:33
Sahrian pipe it down with the profanity. Plus those outside of the AE staff do not have the ability to edit another's post. For your information whenever a post is actually edited the editors name will be shown in the post itself. From what I see the only person editing your posts are you yourself. However, members do have the ability to edit quotes once they use them in their own posts. Maybe that is what you have been talking about. Going back to my first sentence, we do encourage you to read the Codes of Conduct.
 
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Originally posted by Seko

Sahrian pipe it down with the profanity. Plus those outside of the AE staff do not have the ability to edit another's post. For your information whenever a post is actually edited the editors name will be shown in the post itself. From what I see the only person editing your posts are you yourself. However, members do have the ability to edit quotes once they use them in their own posts. Maybe that is what you have been talking about. Going back to my first sentence, we do encourage you to read the Codes of Conduct.
If you have issues then pm one of the AE staff and we will review your concerns.
I agree that I was wrong when I talked about the editing of my post, the anger simply clouded my mind.  But what sense it makes to revive this thread after such a long time? Seko, you are off-topic, if you wanted to express your feelings about my profanity you should have sent me a PM.
I have no need to read the Codes of Conduct. The forum is too low quality for my taste. When I registered I expected something better, but unfortunately there are less than ten posters in the entire forum who really know what they are talking about. Feel free to ban me, as I have no intention to post here again.
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Originally posted by Sahrian

   Feel free to ban me, as I have no intention to post here again.
 
We're all devastated by your decision. So you're now banned (just in case you had second thoughts about posting here again).
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Originally posted by Aeolus

i really enjoyed this article from paul: http://www.allempires.com/article/index.php?q=beware_greeks

what if pre-socratic philosophy had become the dominant propeller of greco-roman civilization? what if power-hungry monotheisms never became state-religions? what if alexandria hadn't been destroyed?

ubine eramus sumus?
 
You and I would not have been born ;)
 
No really. Religion was still are huge part of society and was already playing a central social role. Things would of course had been different, but there would probably still had been power-driven religious groups, or spiritual leaders. Alexandria would probably also at one or other time either been destroyed or just 'fallen in grace' as a centre of learning. The spiritual dogmatic levels of the hermes of Egypt was on the same level as the early christian fathers, and the hermetic divinity was polytheistic. However Garth Fowden make a good argument for the special power-abilities of the monotheistic creeds in creating authority.
 
What would the world have been without the monotheistics religions and their more or less 'divine right'? It would have been different. Would the philosophical ideas of the pre-socratic experienced the same hault of development. Some historians has argued that the pre-socratic philosophy was already experiencing a hault before christianity began to flex muscles. So... As with most speculative historical thoughts it's difficult to say. There can be argued for several diverse directions.
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Back to the topic, for me at least, the value of Pre-Socratic phylosophy is in its "scientific" approach. For the first time in human history, thinkers started a naturalistic approach to understand the world. That's what is more remarkable of this period.

For instance:
Tales introduced the search for the first substance.
Pythagoras established that mathematics was the key to understand the world (Idea we still have)
Democritus was the first to develop the concept of a material world.
 
Etc.
 
I just wonder what would the world had been if superstition hadn't stopped that spark of science. Perhaps we would had spared the Middle Ages' and we had already reached the stars (I copied that idea from Carl Sagan)
 
 
 
 
 
 
"He who attempts to count the stars, not even knowing how to count the knots of the 'quipus'(counting string), ought to be held in derision."

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Originally posted by pinguin

Back to the topic, for me at least, the value of Pre-Socratic phylosophy is in its "scientific" approach. For the first time in human history, thinkers started a naturalistic approach to understand the world. That's what is more remarkable of this period.

For instance:
Tales introduced the search for the first substance.
Pythagoras established that mathematics was the key to understand the world (Idea we still have)
Democritus was the first to develop the concept of a material world.
 
Etc.
 
I just wonder what would the world had been if superstition hadn't stopped that spark of science. Perhaps we would had spared the Middle Ages' and we had already reached the stars (I copied that idea from Carl Sagan)
Though I agree largely with your presentation, I believe it deserves few more nuances. Of coures, the pre-Socractic philosophers were remarkable men for their times, but we must not forget they were men of their times. I do not remember for the moment any earlier manifestation of this naturalistic approach so this looks like a innovation they brought (and the circumstances favored it, the Greek colonies were rather cosmopolite and their intellectuals tasted an openess probably hard to find in the more theocratic civilizations from Mesopotamia or Egypt), but otherwise many of their theories or ideas were express earlier. A cosmogony with a first substance was already known to the civilizations of the Near and Middle East (for instance, the primordial waters of the Egyptians, Nun), the magical value of numbers also existed (especially in Egypt), also tendencies to monism or pantheism (or monotheism).
 
I don't think Carl Sagan has a fair perspective. The European Middle Ages (and I'm not even considering for the moment the religious Islamic civilizations) understood this approach at least from 12th century (through Christian scholars like Adelard of Bath, Willhem of Conches, Thierry of Chartres, and of course, Abelard), if not earlier. Some pre-Socractic philosophers like Pythagoras were known all along, along with other thinkers of the Antiquity and Late Antiquity (Lucretius with his De Rerum Natura, Seneca with Naturales Quaestiones, Boethius, etc.).
 
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I tend to agree with Sagan, particularly when I read about the ideas of Democritus. What a genious! Pythagoras and its number theory, although of mystic roots, imprint a style that still exist in Physics and Mathematics. That time is so wonderful that it is amazing how man lost the path going to hyper-humanistic phylosophies and back to religion and superstition.
The rational mind died even before the Hellenistic civilization declined.
"He who attempts to count the stars, not even knowing how to count the knots of the 'quipus'(counting string), ought to be held in derision."

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Originally posted by pinguin

I tend to agree with Sagan, particularly when I read about the ideas of Democritus. What a genious! Pythagoras and its number theory, although of mystic roots, imprint a style that still exist in Physics and Mathematics. That time is so wonderful that it is amazing how man lost the path going to hyper-humanistic phylosophies and back to religion and superstition.
The rational mind died even before the Hellenistic civilization declined.
It was not at all that way, but feel free to believe what you like. The anti-religious agenda and the myths of a golden age will not die too soon. Wink
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Posts: 7508 		Post Options Post Options   Quote pinguin Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 06-Nov-2008 at 02:29
Yeap. It may be an idea which is part of an anti-religious agenda. However, you should know I am agnostic and I agree with Carl Sagan's ideas in this topicWink
"He who attempts to count the stars, not even knowing how to count the knots of the 'quipus'(counting string), ought to be held in derision."

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Originally posted by Chilbudios

It was not at all that way, but feel free to believe what you like. The anti-religious agenda and the myths of a golden age will not die too soon. Wink
 
No of course it was not. The mystics have had their fair share in every period. And Pythagoras was indeed a mystic (or at least his followers ascribing treatise in his name to give it a dogmatic fealing :) ). But is it anti-religious to consider that the period from the 5 century BCE to the to app. 2 century CE was somehow more productive? And that spirituality did it's fair share to hault the progress. As mentioned above we have the hermetics, (neo-)pythagoreans, followers of Arististotle and (neo-)platonist, jews and christians who alle start to give the different treatise a more dogmatic fealing. The Jews and Christians ascribing parts of the philosophers to be something derived from the holy books, and therefore (dogmatic) correct; the hermetics ascribing treatise to the gods, pythagoreans making Pythagoras as a prophet and hence making his work dogmatic, and almost likewise for the (neo-)platonists and the followers of Aristotle. And furthermore with the rise of the different powerdriven sects of the first centuries of the Common Era we have more and more young people being driven/lured into theology instead of philosophy and science.
 
Is it anti-religious (-spiritual), no it's historical.
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Pinguin, here's a reassessment of Pythagoras:
 
 
Hyper-humanistic philosophy, you say? Big%20smile
 
Originally posted by Soren Svendsen

But is it anti-religious to consider that the period from the 5 century BCE to the to app. 2 century CE was somehow more productive?
No, that would be a simple fact, though with a retrospective bias (productive in what regard? what we'd consider valueable with our 21th century minds for our 21st century goals?)
 
furthermore with the rise of the different powerdriven sects of the first centuries of the Common Era we have more and more young people being driven/lured into theology instead of philosophy and science.
Not entirely true. The early philosophy and science had a great deal of dogmatism. The ancient Greek philosophers (and that is true also for the pre-Socratic ones) travelled to Egypt to learn the secrets of the Egyptian priests. Egypt and Mesopotamia were usually held in that era as centers of great wisdom. Many ancient writers considered their predecessors authoritative and many claims were held based rather on the respect they had for these authorities, instead of real proofs. Of course, I'm not denying that some part of the knowledge had an empirical basis, I'm not deying that in this period the foundation of what we call philosophy or mathematics or logic was established but if we take a look at the entire picture, a large part of it (possibly most of it) didn't.
"Dogma" is a Greek word which initially meant "opinion", and ironically the dogmatism (in this pair of word and meaning) was born in the Greek philosophy. Christianity inherited a good deal of its intellectual dogmatism from the Greek tradition of authorities. "He said so" was often a good enough argument if "he" was held in high regard.
And beyond that, there was an inherent limitation of Greek thinking: there were certain aesthetic principles and cosmological principles (like axioms or postulates today, if you want) which prevented further progress. They'd have needed what we call today a paradigm shift.  
 
On the other hand, the lack of interest in "science" (we can hardly speak of science as we know it today for that era) it is rather pragmatical. For most people it was next to useless. They couldn't prevent earthquakes, they couldn't fight most of the epidemics, they couldn't prevent most of the violence. Life was often rough and short. The interest in scholarship was bound more or less with having a satisfactory and worryless life. Then after the social and economic turmoil from the Late Antiquity, is it really to wonder than instead of musing on philosophy people were more concerned how to feed their families or fight against threats (have you noticed that a large part of the Christian saints are actually military saints)? Religions and religious beliefs are often stories of survival, spirituality is often a method of social cohesion. Without these, certainly there would have been another history, but I'm not sure it would have been the one Pinguin imagines.
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

 
Originally posted by Soren Svendsen

But is it anti-religious to consider that the period from the 5 century BCE to the to app. 2 century CE was somehow more productive?
 
No, that would be a simple fact, though with a retrospective bias (productive in what regard? what we'd consider valueable with our 21th century minds for our 21st century goals?)
 
It's not necissarely a consideration of what our 21th century minds find valuable. It's within the discourse of history of science. Of course one could start an argument about what exactly science is.
 
furthermore with the rise of the different powerdriven sects of the first centuries of the Common Era we have more and more young people being driven/lured into theology instead of philosophy and science.
Not entirely true. The early philosophy and science had a great deal of dogmatism. The ancient Greek philosophers (and that is true also for the pre-Socratic ones) travelled to Egypt to learn the secrets of the Egyptian priests. Egypt and Mesopotamia were usually held in that era as centers of great wisdom. Many ancient writers considered their predecessors authoritative and many claims were held based rather on the respect they had for these authorities, instead of real proofs.
 
I do not disagree :) But it was a matter of degree in my opinion, and I would say that the emphasis on dogmatism became more strong later.
 
Of course, I'm not denying that some part of the knowledge had an empirical basis, I'm not deying that in this period the foundation of what we call philosophy or mathematics or logic was established but if we take a look at the entire picture, a large part of it (possibly most of it) didn't.
 
The last part has to be speculative. And it is possible that some later writers contributed to construct an image of a 'free' science.
  
On the other hand, the lack of interest in "science" (we can hardly speak of science as we know it today for that era) it is rather pragmatical. For most people it was next to useless. They couldn't prevent earthquakes, they couldn't fight most of the epidemics, they couldn't prevent most of the violence. Life was often rough and short. The interest in scholarship was bound more or less with having a satisfactory and worryless life. Then after the social and economic turmoil from the Late Antiquity, is it really to wonder than instead of musing on philosophy people were more concerned how to feed their families or fight against threats (have you noticed that a large part of the Christian saints are actually military saints)? Religions and religious beliefs are often stories of survival, spirituality is often a method of social cohesion. Without these, certainly there would have been another history, but I'm not sure it would have been the one Pinguin imagines.
 
The question of interest is an important element. Some of the greek and roman philosophers, physicians did argue that people should uphold their profession for the interest. Of course the case that much of the natural philosophy, physics etc. did not have much practical outcome, made it the harder for people to keep interested. Astrology, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine however seemed still to persuade a fair amount of student because it had some practical value. But on the other side it should also be said that with the rise of the different sects it also followed that schools of religious learning became quite frequent (an concerning astrology many christians criticized it because it was in conflict with the idea of the free will). This also had its fair amount of influence on the amount of students for science and philosophy.
 
One thing is sure in my opinion; that there's no simple reason to why the history developed as it did. There was a range of different reasons for the development. It was not just because of sociological and economic changes.


Edited by Soren Svendsen - 06-Nov-2008 at 11:15
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

Pinguin, here's a reassessment of Pythagoras:
 
 
Hyper-humanistic philosophy, you say? Big%20smile
 
...
 
Yes. I mean people like Plato that, although had and add that said "do not enter here who lacks knowledge on math" he himself was pretty ignorant on the topic, and preffered to describe the Atlantis and a world of dreams, instead of make hard calculations with geometry.... Not a phylosopher of my taste, anyways LOL. I preffer Archimedes to him Wink
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Originally posted by Soren Svendsen

..No of course it was not. The mystics have had their fair share in every period. And Pythagoras was indeed a mystic (or at least his followers ascribing treatise in his name to give it a dogmatic fealing :) ). But is it anti-religious to consider that the period from the 5 century BCE to the to app. 2 century CE was somehow more productive? And that spirituality did it's fair share to hault the progress. As mentioned above we have the hermetics, (neo-)pythagoreans, followers of Arististotle and (neo-)platonist, jews and christians who alle start to give the different treatise a more dogmatic fealing. The Jews and Christians ascribing parts of the philosophers to be something derived from the holy books, and therefore (dogmatic) correct; the hermetics ascribing treatise to the gods, pythagoreans making Pythagoras as a prophet and hence making his work dogmatic, and almost likewise for the (neo-)platonists and the followers of Aristotle. And furthermore with the rise of the different powerdriven sects of the first centuries of the Common Era we have more and more young people being driven/lured into theology instead of philosophy and science.
 
Is it anti-religious (-spiritual), no it's historical.
 
Of course Pythagoras was a mystic and his ideas are related today's Christianity and Masonry (consider the pentagram), but he was mainly a Mathematician. Perhaps one of the brightest minds of all time.
Yes, he believed peas were animals but who cares? Everyone has the right to commit some mistakes LOLLOL
 


Edited by pinguin - 06-Nov-2008 at 11:25
"He who attempts to count the stars, not even knowing how to count the knots of the 'quipus'(counting string), ought to be held in derision."

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Originally posted by Soren Svendsen

It's not necissarely a consideration of what our 21th century minds find valuable. It's within the discourse of history of science. Of course one could start an argument about what exactly science is.
This is my point - a consideration within some discourses of our 21th century (to address the latest "achievements", similar positions have been expressed since Renaissance). Not every discourse of the history of science holds such claims. There are plenty of historians rejecting concepts like Dark Age/ For instance, the Annales School, through its longue durée paradigm suggests a long Late Antiquity; historians like Jacques Le Goff even suggest the modern age started earlier questioning the concept of Middle Ages itself! And this is not only a question of chronology, but also is the reinterpretation of events, in different structures, in different flows.
 
The last part has to be speculative.
If you refer to the "a large part of it didn't" part, yes, it is speculative considering I haven't read all the ancient authors but only some and I'm generalizing from a limited knowledge. However, I'd find weird and improbable that all the texts I haven't read to contain only "hard science". I'd find it equally weird and improbable for the texts which weren't preserved.
 
And it is possible that some later writers contributed to construct an image of a 'free' science.
Can you detail on that? I'm not sure I get your point here.
 
The question of interest is an important element. Some of the greek and roman philosophers, physicians did argue that people should uphold their profession for the interest. Of course the case that much of the natural philosophy, physics etc. did not have much practical outcome, made it the harder for people to keep interested. Astrology, astronomy, mathematics, and medicine however seemed still to persuade a fair amount of student because it had some practical value. But on the other side it should also be said that with the rise of the different sects it also followed that schools of religious learning became quite frequent (an concerning astrology many christians criticized it because it was in conflict with the idea of the free will). This also had its fair amount of influence on the amount of students for science and philosophy.
I think we're in agreement here. That's why I find dubious to blame superstition alone (or other scapegoats) when in all probability it was a much more complex process. And the other evidence is that once Europe progressed in many other fields (socially, economically, etc.), the intellectual life resumed (and I mean here the Middle Ages "revolutions" from 11-12th centuries onward).
 
On astrology I think it should be mentioned that despite criticism was fairly popular among Christians.
 
One thing is sure in my opinion; that there's no simple reason to why the history developed as it did. There was a range of different reasons for the development. It was not just because of sociological and economic changes.
Of course, and I agree with that. But at the same time we can't understand the history of ideas if we don't consider that they were held by real people with real lives.
 
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Sorry for the delay.
 
I really don't have much to add, right now.
 
Regarding the creation of the "history of science"-construct I'm refering to that the later 'scientists' was very much a part of constructing the sources we have for the early natural-philosophers, physicians etc., ie. there representation of the earlier historical individuals is predominately what we have to work with in respect of many of the relevant individuals. Are these representation correct? But that's a whole other matter.
 
That's why I find dubious to blame superstition alone (or other scapegoats) when in all probability it was a much more complex process
 
And it's quite difficult to make a coherent analysis of this. Most historians have tended to find the single events or sociological developments which made the history develop as it did. The debate about why the greeks was able to create the scientif curricullum they did is a perfect example of this. And the ones argueing for an inclusive approach considering different elements, have great difficulties of making a coherent contruction of this, because, naturally, it becomes quite complex to elaborate on.
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Originally posted by Soren Svendsen

Regarding the creation of the "history of science"-construct I'm refering to that the later 'scientists' was very much a part of constructing the sources we have for the early natural-philosophers, physicians etc., ie. there representation of the earlier historical individuals is predominately what we have to work with in respect of many of the relevant individuals. Are these representation correct? But that's a whole other matter.
I guess many of them are not, that's why we still have debunkings, like the one I linked earlier in the thread on Pythagoras.
 
And it's quite difficult to make a coherent analysis of this. Most historians have tended to find the single events or sociological developments which made the history develop as it did. The debate about why the greeks was able to create the scientif curricullum they did is a perfect example of this. And the ones argueing for an inclusive approach considering different elements, have great difficulties of making a coherent contruction of this, because, naturally, it becomes quite complex to elaborate on.
Difficult it may be, why should it be simple? But mono-causalism is a dangerous approach. Even if sometimes one might be aware of other possible causes, discussing and analysing one cause will bring an almost inevitable bias, thus compromising the analysis. Moreover it may happen that the "cause" is actually a dead-end. For instance, discussing in terms of "science" of "supersitition" (superstition causing stagnation of scientific progress) seems misguided from several points of view. For instance many ancient beliefs are commonly labeled "scientific" or "superstitious" depending of how they fit our modern views. Democrit is often considered as a pioneer of science, though his belief in multiple worlds or his atomism had absolutely no emprical evidence at that time. 2 millenia ago the beliefs that the sky is populated by gods or by other worlds with living beings were equally irrational and superstitious.
 
 
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

For instance, Paul painted Xenophanes ridiculing polytheism (that Ethiopian gods are black, Thracian gods have red hair, etc.) but didn't follow him where Xenophanes concluded there must be a greater god than all these "lesser gods", universal, unchaning, absolute, etc.
 
I see the primal factor here being the translation into the greek language of the Hebrew bible, called the Septuagint, in circa 300 BCE: Paul appeared some 400 years later. The Septuagint intitiated almost all turns in modern, western history and civilization, including the faculties of Monotheism, Creationism, alphabetically written books, Democrasy [not a Greek invention!] and all world accepted laws held today.
 
What happened was, after 70 CE, when Judea was seen as destroyed and never to return, the Greeks initiated Christianity, by enjoining their beliefs with the Hebrew bible; the pre-islamic arabs initiated the Quran - both fundamentally based on the Hebrew bible: none of these peoples followed these beliefs prior to 70 CE, while all were entrenched in acquiring them via numerous wars, rivalries and hatreds.
Moses - the First Zionist.
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Originally posted by Chilbudios

Originally posted by Soren Svendsen

Regarding the creation of the "history of science"-construct I'm refering to that the later 'scientists' was very much a part of constructing the sources we have for the early natural-philosophers, physicians etc., ie. there representation of the earlier historical individuals is predominately what we have to work with in respect of many of the relevant individuals. Are these representation correct? But that's a whole other matter.
I guess many of them are not, that's why we still have debunkings, like the one I linked earlier in the thread on Pythagoras.
 
And it's quite difficult to make a coherent analysis of this. Most historians have tended to find the single events or sociological developments which made the history develop as it did. The debate about why the greeks was able to create the scientif curricullum they did is a perfect example of this. And the ones argueing for an inclusive approach considering different elements, have great difficulties of making a coherent contruction of this, because, naturally, it becomes quite complex to elaborate on.
Difficult it may be, why should it be simple? But mono-causalism is a dangerous approach. Even if sometimes one might be aware of other possible causes, discussing and analysing one cause will bring an almost inevitable bias, thus compromising the analysis. Moreover it may happen that the "cause" is actually a dead-end. For instance, discussing in terms of "science" of "supersitition" (superstition causing stagnation of scientific progress) seems misguided from several points of view. For instance many ancient beliefs are commonly labeled "scientific" or "superstitious" depending of how they fit our modern views. Democrit is often considered as a pioneer of science, though his belief in multiple worlds or his atomism had absolutely no emprical evidence at that time. 2 millenia ago the beliefs that the sky is populated by gods or by other worlds with living beings were equally irrational and superstitious.
 
 
 
 
While much of this is correct and legitimate, there is also a problem therein. Monotheism and Creationism are not unscientific: it is based on the fundamental scientific premise of 'cause and effect'.
 
The problem you have highlighted is not with Monotheism, but with alligning this with prefered dieties and messengers, then making Monotheism as exclusively reliant on those dogmas. If for example, everyone, including scientists, agreed that the buck 'MUST' stop at one, but that none can identifiy, explain or ratify that Monotheistic ONE - because the one must be, at least, transcendent of its derivitives, there would be no problem which contradicts science.
 
Monotheism has more science and mathematical agreement than its antithesis; while preferred constructs what signifies that Monotheism are seperate issues - these must be dealt with seperately.


Edited by IamJoseph - 23-Nov-2008 at 02:06
Moses - the First Zionist.
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Caliph
Caliph

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Posts: 2966 		Post Options Post Options   Quote red clay Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23-Nov-2008 at 02:17
Originally posted by IamJoseph

Originally posted by Chilbudios

For instance, Paul painted Xenophanes ridiculing polytheism (that Ethiopian gods are black, Thracian gods have red hair, etc.) but didn't follow him where Xenophanes concluded there must be a greater god than all these "lesser gods", universal, unchaning, absolute, etc.
 
I see the primal factor here being the translation into the greek language of the Hebrew bible, called the Septuagint, in circa 300 BCE: Paul appeared some 400 years later. The Septuagint intitiated almost all turns in modern, western history and civilization, including the faculties of Monotheism, Creationism, alphabetically written books, Democrasy [not a Greek invention!] and all world accepted laws held today.
 
What happened was, after 70 CE, when Judea was seen as destroyed and never to return, the Greeks initiated Christianity, by enjoining their beliefs with the Hebrew bible; the pre-islamic arabs initiated the Quran - both fundamentally based on the Hebrew bible: none of these peoples followed these beliefs prior to 70 CE, while all were entrenched in acquiring them via numerous wars, rivalries and hatreds.
 
 
JOE!!!!  Stop with the religion NOW.  Drop it and go back on topic.
 
 
 
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