----- Original Message -----
From: silk
To: calvin
Sent: Wednesday, December 13, 2000 8:56 AM
Subject: Copelston groupies & the horse they rode in on!
Silk here: I've been on this list for approx. one month now & I must say this post, I do believe, contains more common sense than most. As I see it everything we presently consist of & use is "hand me down" from past generations for how could it not be! And I do mean everything. Example: how much of what you use everday could you provide for yourself. What if you had been born in a very primitive society & among other things there was no access to books where do "you" think "You'd" be mentally right now! Of course there might have been some philosopher types in your group {hand me down}this could be your only salvation! I know quite a few who say "no matter what "I" would have pulled myself up by my bootstraps & would have became what "I " have become!" Much of western "thought" is made up of this ignorance & meglomania, I personally don't buy it! Nor do I believe would Aristotle nor Plato be so "me, myself & I" inclined, of course I don't live in the good ole us of a where every boy can grow up to be president & where one can be anything they set their heart upon & genetics & environment be damned as they can easily be overcome with a little ambition & elbow grease! Yeah sure! In spite of all our "grand achievements" in technology we are, outside our own narrow little professional fields, one of the mentally laziest & most sheep like ages that has ever existed but how proud, yes indeed! Ha! Arrogant little man strutting & swaggering about so self assured, so full of himself though he be so fragile to the reality of his own capacities, limited that they are. I wonder how much ambition you'd have if you were born into poverty & that all your life it had been a losing battle, an up hill struggle constantly swimming against the current with one hand tied behind your back. A situation in which no
contest you entered was ever fair. Where you were constantly told that you ought to be damn well grateful for the little you had & thank your lucky stars it wasn't worse & be content at that with no whining or complaining. I wonder how much concentration you'd have in school with an empty stomach, a life enveloped in a totally inadequate diet, or just how sharp your learning skills would be were you under the constant pressures which exist in a family that is trapped in the cruel legacy of poverty! He came down the ladder financially & socially but went up it, at the same time, spiritually. When you hit rock bottom there are only two ways to go, straight back "up" or sideways lost in self pity & depression & from those plumbless depths few ever return. The material "up" is not the only "up". For those know-ing no other way to go faith offers hope & is therefore the opiate of the masses in that they get "up & high" on religion for lack of another way to turn & can you blame them, be religion a real or man made thing? Realization: "He was not angry or irritable with her anymore but calm as he knew with certainty that it was over for he had suddenly decided or rather found the decision already made up staring him right in the face. No one decides anything! Everything that happens is intrinsically like the person it happens to. Tailor made like. Interesting things don't happen to dull people type thing. One may add oil to water but for the life of them they won't get them to combine or react at all! When you observe someone, including yourself, doing some-thing, anything, try to view it as one of natures tenacles. Nature acts, speaks & can be known thru mankind, he but a frail instrument, a catalytic conduit directed in his every action by nature for what he'll never know.
> Brent said:
> "Without the Egyptians and the other cultures of the Mediterranean there
> would have been no Greek science at all. Asclepius was modeled on the
> Egpytian physician Imhotep -- Aristarchus lived and worked in Alexandria, no
> coinciedence to his discoveries, chemistry began in Egypt (alchemy) and so on
> and so on. The Greeks took what they found from the older civilizations and
> refined that and developed a much more systematic approach to the sciences --
> that is their contribution to the development of science, but that wouldn't
> have been possible without the influence of the older cultures of the area."
>
> I agree with this, and in addition a great deal came from Persia and India.
> For Copelston to suggest that the trading vessels that passed to and fro
> between Greece and the neighboring countries carried nothing but traders and
> merchants is a weak argument. Durant points out that Thales, Pythagoras,
> Solon, Plato and Democritus traveled to Egypt, for example -- probably aboard
> those trading ships.
>
> Having said this, however, the point must be made that the Greeks did
> something with their acquired knowledge from others that was indeed
> different. They had a new and vital sense of intellectual freedom and
> curiosity, which allowed (or compelled) them to go beyond the unquestioning
> acceptance of phenomena -- to seek its cause. Knowledge for its own sake rose
> above mere utility for laying out plots of ground for planting or estimating
> the various geometric design needs of pyramids. .
>
> (Historical reductionism can reach a point of diminishing value -- where did
> the Egyptians get their knowledge? -- and is it really important relative to
> our Copelston reading?)
>
> Regards,
> Richard
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