[snip]
[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.
I can't see where Charles Murray has mentioned this, but if he's saying that the Greeks were not practical people then I'm afraid he's quite wrong. He's believing in the usual myth. The Greeks developed some enormously intricate machinery -- steam driven toys, archimedes screw, cantilevered cranes, a navigator's guide to the planets with many gear wheels and highly accurate, Greek fire (they probably weren't far off developing explosive missiles either), etc. They probably developed as much technnology as they needed to, given their circumstances. They were principally traders and, as above, had developed superb navigation equipment. They were also suberb craftsmen in bronze and developed many advanced building techniques. But the period of their intellectual/technological development was relatively very short -- a few centuries at the most. If they had not been overcome by the Roman Empire and had extended their holdings into new sorts of terrain with different potentials, then I've little doubt that they would have developed many other practical things, as the Chinese did.
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".
It wasn't just Newton, of course. It is now being realised that Hooke was just as great as Newton and probably more versatile but didn't publicise himself as relentlessly as Newton. Some say he was a better physicist and that Newton plagiarised some of his ideas. Liebnitz developed a better calculus than Newton -- it is the direct ancestor of today's method. Newton was a towering figure but there were other towering figures also in England and Europe at the time.
Let's assume that Murray is right.
I'm therefore not at all sure that Murray is right if you've correctly summarised him above. Incidentally, I think some of Murray's main findings are wrong in Human Accomplishment. He's squeezed together two quite different effects to produce his scheme of greatness. But if you haven't read it then I won't specify now. It's still a magnificent book and is a goldmine of data for those who want to think about the sweep of hiuman achievement, but I'm not sure that it tells us anything very new.
It occurs to me that Murray is not at all au fait with current research in brain matters. In fact, I'll go further and say that there is a complete absence of any modern brain research. This is very surprising, not to say, astonishing, considering his interest in IQ. Also, he does not comment on the phenomenon that geniuses seem to occur in clumps of threes and fours throughout history. (The Lunar Society in Birmingham which virtually got the Industrial Revolution going in England comprised maybe about eight or nine prime movers.) I think Murray is so fixed in the genetic dominance of ability that he overlooks the cultural background of geniuses and also the mutual effect of geniuses usually give support to one another -- 'cos they're so rare that few others appreciate them (except Newton -- he was as anti-social as could be, almost a sociopath from what I've read of him)
I don't understand the rest of what you've written below I'm afraid. My apologies, but our vocabularies are so different, I can't get on your wavelength no matter how hard I try.
Keith Hudson
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]
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Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
