[snip]I have yet to see where scholars have really answered the question for either China or the classical Greco-Roman world (and late Medieval Islam? and some of the American pre-Columbian cultures?):
Why did not these cultures "take off" scientifically and in engineering, as Europe did aproximately beginning with Galileo? What went wrong?
We can blame the decline of Minoan civilization on a massive volcanic eruption, locally equivalent for the Minoans to that meteor that changed global environmental conditions to the detriment of the dinosaurs.
If it does not sound prosaic, I think we can understand why the rich and liberal culture of late medieval Islam declined. At about that time, the technological and artistic fruits of China were bursting into Europe, and the Islamic clerics had to take a stance on this because they were mightily afraid of the consequences, particularly the military. A series of /ijtihads/ (learned interpretations of the Koran) by their senior divines, however, caused Islam to turn against western ways. The rich trading culture of Islam all through the Mediterranean and beyond started declining vis-a-vis European merchants declined from then on. Whereas western Europe gained some of the virtues of liberal civilisation, Islam lost them. (At the same time, a parallel series of discussions was going on within the Jewish community but the 'liberal' rabbis -- e.g. Maimonides -- held sway.
Well, Charles Murray proposes an answer anent the classical Greeks in today's NYT Week in Review: The invention of formal deductive logic turned the classical Greeks' heads away from empirical praxis [he probably would not use that word!] to abstracted speculative deduction. And then Newton turned modern Europe toward the reduction of the human world of daily life to physics. BUt all this happened as "unintended consequences".
Let's assume that Murray is right. The question arises:
How could European civilization, for over 2,000 years
and continuing almost unabated today, have essentially
have lost track of the universal fact that all
ratiocination is human *activity* with motivations,
aspirations, intentions, etc.? To answer this question and to turn the Juggernaut
European humanity,
including our universities and research labs, etc. --
to answer this question and turn the Juggernaut
around, was Edmund Husserl's lifework, as well
as the intention of others who took the other
fork in the road to enlightenment at the end of the
Middle Ages: Erasmus, Rabelais... and in our time,
persons such as Stephen Toulmin.Why doe almost nobody take of the fact that all laws of physics which take the form:
If <whatever-1> then <whatever-2>
Really have the form:
If we do <whatever-1a> then we will
encounter <whatever-b>?
It is impossible in principle to show, e.g., that
For every "action" [matter in motion..] there
is an equal but opposite reaction [matter in motion...]But it may indeed be possible for us to discover that:
Every time we look at matter in motion, we find
that when we observe one thing strike another thing
in a certain way, we observe that the first thing's
speed and direction of motion changes in an equal
measure but in the opposite direction of the
change we observe in the speed and direction of
the second object. AND, furthermore, each time
we make such an observation, we do so because
we have certain desires which we can describe for
ourselves and for others either immediately or
thru a process of self-reflection. HENCE, two
"sciences" are elaborated in every experiment
we do: (1) Physics, and (2) the interpretation
of daily life (See! This science is so little
practiced that it does not even have a name
that would be generally understood. Certainly
"Transcendental phenomnology" would not
make sense to many educatd persons).Why is this almost never done? Or am I a member of some small fraction of the population who have not yet heard the good news?
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://scribe.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
