Why do we [dis]like Carl Sagan?
The Greeks had plenty to say (and write) about enslaving non Greek folk. Almost all of it favorable. Aristotle, for example, believed that some people are only fit to be slaves to their betters.
And Sagan did simper and gush over the library at Alexandria. It just occurred to me that if the Library had survived our science would be a thousand years behind where it is now. Most of what the Greeks thought about physical reality (with very few exceptions) was flat out wrong. Also their mathematics was lacking is several respects. For example, even Archimedes and Eudoxus, the greatest mathematicians of ancient times, did not have the zero.
ruveyn
ruveyn
So what?
Your point is still inane as hell.
The greeks WERE advanced in science and math for their time in some areas.
Where as slavery was typical of the time- every country had slaves then so why pick on the Greeks?
I dont blame him for pointing out the exceptional and ignoring the unexceptional( which he didnt even really ignore).
You dont have to agree with Sagan, but why all of this vitriol?
We already agreed above on this thread that nobody including the ancient greeks were perfect.
If you're gonna get this psychotic about a forty year old TV show then its time to take your meds and chill.
Jeez!
Revuyn is getting homocidal again, and Sand and Phillogos are starting to converse with each other in baby talk!
Obviously the topic has been exhausted and its time to end the thread.
As has been noted, truth does not disappear. It is always available for those employing the proper methods of observation and validation. But there is much more in any literature of any culture than the intent and proposed exposition of any particular author. The qualities, styles, presumptions and fashions of the times can be fascinating and informative of the underlying interlocking social structures and that is an invaluable loss. What would be worthwhile, for one instance, is the difficulties which were encountered by the lack of a modern understanding and how that skewed the thinking of the era and how it was surmounted. That lost material may have contained much beyond raw information that current scholars of the culture would be delighted to know. Whether any current explorer in antiquities would or would not miss that stuff is not the point. The point is we will never know. The hubris exhibited by these comments here on the vast superiority of what we now know will, no doubt, wither frightfully in the unmerciful passage of time as our own ignorances and intellectual clumsinesses become apparent, assuming the massive stupidities now in operation throughout the world do not snuff out humanity altogether.
Why is it SO hard to get a simple question asked and answered?
We agree there. You are not conversing with Sand. You have amply demonstrated it is beyond your mental capabilities.
So what?
Your point is still inane as hell.
The greeks WERE advanced in science and math for their time in some areas.
.
Philosophically and scientifically advanced down a dead end road. Aristotle's teachings delayed the development of proper physical science for over 1000 years.
ruveyn
Billyuns and Billuyns......zzzz......Stuhr Stuff......zzzz......Pale blue dot .....zzzz.......Whale song....zzzzz.......who will speak for Earth.....zzzz.....
ruveyn
And old ruveyn drooling and mumbling in his drowse.... zzz.... kill all the Muslims....the government is stealing my hard earned...zzz... money to build space telescopes and particle accelerators....atom bomb the world zzz...
Come on guys, try to keep the personal insults out, I don't want to have to lock this thread.
I can provide actual quotes to substantiate my remarks if it is required.
Of that I have no doubt. I just wish discussions would remain with the topic and not devolve into mud slinging, name calling or belittling. It is like being in a school yard sometimes reading the posts in PPR.
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I've left WP indefinitely.
Come on guys, try to keep the personal insults out, I don't want to have to lock this thread.
I can provide actual quotes to substantiate my remarks if it is required.
And I will verify them.
If I can parody Carl Sagan asleep, good old Sand can parody me asleep.
ruveyn
Come on guys, try to keep the personal insults out, I don't want to have to lock this thread.
I can provide actual quotes to substantiate my remarks if it is required.
Of that I have no doubt. I just wish discussions would remain with the topic and not devolve into mud slinging, name calling or belittling. It is like being in a school yard sometimes reading the posts in PPR.
Well, I did at least get a few useful responses that will take me a step toward who responds to Sagan and who not.
Chomsly is ennea-8, Sagan as surely as need be ennea-2. Hawking I am pretty sure ennea-1 and Feynman ennea-5 - and that fits my reactions to them and those of the others whose placement I can guess at.
I really could not have anticipated this "do not touch the Lord's anointed" thing with Sagan, though.