I ran across something interesting today. I didn't realize this, but
Protagoras' famous aphorism "Man is the measure of all things..." has an
ambiguity in the English (at least for amateurs who only read translations and
dabble in Greek words).
I'd always assumed that what standardly gets translated as "measure" was
related to the Latin "ratio," and that old saw about how "reason" and
mathematical "measuring" are ancient relations. etc. Well, the Latin "ratio"
is the translation of "logos," which all us amateurs recognize as one of the
more famous Greek words: reason, thought, account, measure, word, etc.
The Greek word translated as "measure" in Protagoras' aphorism is _not_ Logos,
but
Metron
"Metro" in modern Greek is still "measure." However, what I ran across which
made much of what the actual Greek word is was an alternative translation by
Mario Untersteiner (often considered a renegade scholar by respected
Anglophones I've run across), who wrote a book on the Sophists that is almost
impossible to find in English for under $50 (been out of print for half a
century):
"Man is the master of all experiences..."
I have no bead on what Greek word (or phrase) "things" or "experiences"
translates. All I can identify is "metron" and "anthropos" (the gender-neutral
"man"). But I imagine "experiences" sounds even better to Pirsigians, whatever
one might think of "measure vs. master."
Matt
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