-----Original Message----- From: ml [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, January 10, 2009 1:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [MD] Christendom's place in the MOQ
Krimel, <snip> [Krimel] > Aside from being overtly anti-Semitic it echoes the kind of cultural > chauvinism one expects to hear from Platt and Ham. Pointing to extreme > orthodox Jews as representing Jewish imperviousness the intellect is a bit > like claiming the Pat Robinson represents all Christian thinking or that > Bo speaks for the MoQ. mel: The diversity of Jewish thinking/culture/groups, both now and throughout their long history makes any 'critique' problematic. We also have a conditioned response from the twentieth century of being overly sensitive to any critique of anything Jewish as a likely 'anti-semitism' [Krimel] I did not mean to suggest that any criticism of Jews equals anti-semitism I was referring specifically to Bo's comments which frequently are anti-semetic. The real criticism should be leveled at fundamentalism which seems to inflect nearly every sect at some point of another. Krimel: > Only the truly clueless would claim that the Muslim world is cursed with > lack of intellect. The Muslims were making advances in philosophy and > mathematics while Europeans were eating with their hands and fretting > aboutwitches. Ever heard of Arabic numerals? The Renaissance you like to > go on about was touch off in part because the Crusaders picked up the > Greeks from the Arabs who had been studying and commenting on them for > centuries. mel: The Muslim golden age was far less Arab, when you examine it closely, than what we were left with the impression of in survey level courses. (Not to say there were no Arabs involved in it, but despite taking an "arabic name" a significant portion of their movers and shakers were of other cultures. a la melting pot.) [Krimel] I was using Arab and Muslim interchangeably and you are quite right that is not correct. Subtlety is frequently lost around here. [Mel] The Libraries of Constantinople provided most of the texts that kick-started the Renaissance. Although many texts were translated earlier, hence the Muslims learned about Zero. (related by Greeks from the invention in Babylon) Most of the Muslim exposure to Greek thought was also from Constantinople, but unlike the West they turned away after two centuries of dabbling. While we learned about the 'Arabic' numerals, again they claimed them, but the system came from India. The older Indian numerals look like ours, the Arabic interpretations are too stylized to recognize aside from 1-2-3. [Krimel] The Greeks did use Babylonian math at times but it was cumbersome. It was rooted in base 60 and zero was used mainly as a place holder not in the full sense that zero is understood today. The Greeks went back and forth between the Babylonian systems at times because their system did not even have a place holder. But they were also philosophical horrified by the concept of Zero. A more modern conception of Zero originated with the Hindus and was adopted by the Arabs as you point out. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
