From: David Buchanan (DBuchanan@ClassicalRadio.org)
Date: Sun Nov 16 2003 - 21:29:07 GMT
Platt, Bo, Paul and all:
Platt said:
As for voices of gods, I subscribe to the much simpler (and IMO more
plausible) explanation that Gods were invented to explain causes which were
otherwise inexplicable to primitive man, like kids attributing thunder and
lightning to Gods having a bowling game in the sky. Man, including primitive
man, cannot survive when plagued by doubts.
dmb says:
You subscribe to a view that many people share. But I think its quite wrong.
Its a very naive vision of religion and mythology as bad archaic science. On
top of the idea that this is the condescending view of modern science
projecting its own values in the most inappropriate places, it ignores what
the MOQ says, namely that the social and intellectual levels are two
completely different levels of reality with completely differenat aims and
values. Even outside of the MOQ, there are lots of very well informed people
who could do a much better job than me in explaining why this view is so
badly mistaken. Jaynes and Livio are just the two that leap to mind, but if
you're sincerely interested in the way pre-historic people looked at things,
there is no shortage of scholarship. I would also suggest Peter Kingsley's
"ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY, MYSTERY, AND MAGIC: Empedocles and Pythagorean
Tradition" or anything by Joseph Cambpell.
Last sunday, Platt said:
...............there are a number of observations made by Teresi that
tend to dispute Jaynes' theory. Example: "The Babylonians developed the
Pythagorean theorem at least 1,500 years before Pythagoras was born."
Also, "The Egyptians mastered fractions, and Babylonian mathematics
created a B.C version of the calculator, with its tables of reciprocals,
squares, cubes, square roots and cube roots." ...I think it sheds some new
light on the question. At the very least, it suggests that our knowledge of
those ancient times is limited and largely speculative.
dmb says:
Ha! I think YOUR knowledge of those ancient times is limited and largely
speculative. (Sorry, I couldn't resist) But to be more serious, I'd like to
point out that this only gets at Pirsig's point on the matter. In his letter
to Paul, Pirsig wrote...
"Another subtler confusion exists between the word, "intellect," that
can mean thought about anything and the word, "intellectual," where
abstract thought itself is of primary importance. Thus, though it may be
assumed that the Egyptians who preceded the Greeks had intellect, it can
be doubted that theirs was an intellectual culture."
dmb adds:
Think of it like this... The ancient Egyptians used sophisticated
mathematics and geometry to build the pyramids. They used precise
astronomical measurements of the stars to place stargates to connect those
great monuments with the night sky, the Egyptians ensured that the soul of
the dead King could successfully travel to the land of the dead. The point
being that this serves as an example of what Pirsig means when he says they
had intellect, but that their culture was not intellectual. The aim and
purpose of their so-called science had absolutely nothing to do with science
as we understand the term. It served a religious function, a social function
and was not intended as a tool for the investigation of nature. It wasn't
even concieved as such. And its no accident that the keepers of this
so-called science, a very misleading term when used to describe what they
were doing, were priests.
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