Bo said: All philosophers and historians point to this time as a great watershed in history, mostly it's the usual "democracy", but some see deeper upheavals of which democracy and science were mere fallouts (Owen Barfield f.ex) Pirsig's however is the grandest and most convincing interpretation.
Matt: In my experience, all philosophers and most classicists point to "philosophy" as the watershed thing that happened. For a long time, I wished they said "democracy," but now I'm pretty sure we should be a bit more nuanced, and the big thing is clearly the transition from "primary oral culture" (the term used to denote a culture that has, basically, never even heard of a thing called written language) to a post-literate culture. And while I still like to say a "big thing" happened, I say "nuanced" because I think we need a more complex story about cultural evolution then just pointing to all the potential precursors to Descartes' explicit S/O dichotomy (and, hell, not even his, it was probably some German's construction). Because, as you say, Bo said: And of course the subject/object term were still far into the future (not to speak about mind/matter) yet the idea is that the notion of principles deeper that the old mythological reality triggered a new attitude. Its first fallout was Socrates' Appearance/Truth, then Plato's Shadows/Ideas and finally Aristotle's Form/Substance. The first indicating the fleeting, transient element, the latter the eternal permanent one. This split to become the fundament of the Western SOM-based culture. (The East to have transcended it) Now so cemented that you folks don't even manage to imagine yourself outside of it. You might say I'm just trying to be more historically conscientious, but I'm sure there's more going on with you. But then your last statement pretty much expresses fully why conversation about the matter is boring. Matt _________________________________________________________________ Hotmail® has ever-growing storage! Don’t worry about storage limits. http://windowslive.com/Tutorial/Hotmail/Storage?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_HM_Tutorial_Storage1_052009 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/
