Ancient Wisdom and Science

What did people intend to know?

Consider the Classical Greeks and Romans, and the Early Christians…. How did their view of what was important to know differ from ours?

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/c/creation_myths.html

Egyptian religious texts were written in hieroglyphics from at least 3000 BC until about 400 AD when Christian rulers ordered the ancient temples closed. From that time until the 1800s hieroglyphs were unknown symbols. Non religious texts were written in a simpler form of writing called ‘hieratic’ and then later in a modified form called ‘demotic’ – the papyrus above is a literary text written about 1300 BC – it mentions two priests and refers to the gods they serve.

In 1798 the French Army under Napoleon invaded Egypt and the following year French scholars who were tagging along with the Army discovered the Rosetta stone, a carving made in 196 BC at the order of the (Greek) Pharaoh Ptolemy V with the same text written in three ways: in hieroglyphics, in demotic and in Greek. The text is a decree thanking some priests for helping the Pharaoh during a rebellion.

A French linguist, J.F. Champollion did most of the translation of the stone in 1822. The first complete English translation of the stone was made by three undergraduates at the University of Pennsylvania in 1858. These translations began the modern study of ancient Egyptian history.

What good is all this idle speculation…? It won’t keep you warm or put food on the table. But the same can be said of vast tracts of culture. Yet in spite of this people have gone on asking such questions for centuries, undeterred by the thought of their purposelessness. Why was this? Were they just very stupid?... We want to know why the question of ‘what is really real’ still fascinates and bothers us….Am I real? Are you real?

(L. Kolakowski Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing?)

"No other poet, no other literary figure in all history for that matter, occupied a place in the life of his people such as Homer's. He was their pre-eminent symbol of nationhood, the unimpeachable authority on their earliest history, and a decisive figure in the creation of their pantheon.... Plato [Republic 606E] tells us that there were Greeks who firmly believed that ... a man ought to regulate the whole of his life by following this poet.“

p. 5 The World of Odysseus, by M.I. Finley

Book I Part 1 The Iliad of Homer 800BC

Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles son of Peleus, that

brought countless ills upon the Achaeans. Many a brave soul did

it send hurrying down to Hades, and many a hero did it yield a

prey to dogs and vultures, for so were the counsels of Jove

fulfilled from the day on which the son of Atreus, king of men,

and great Achilles, first fell out with one another.A cup by the Byrgos painter done about 480 BCE as reproduced by the modern painter David Claudon

(Socrates friend:) I understand you to say that knowledge and being, which the science of dialectic contemplates, are clearer than the notions of the arts, as they are termed, which proceed from hypotheses only: these are also contemplated by the understanding, and not by the senses: yet, because they start from hypotheses and do not ascend to a principle, those who contemplate them appear to you not to exercise the higher reason upon them, although when a first principle is added to them they are cognizable by the higher reason. And the habit which is concerned with geometry and the cognate sciences I suppose that you would term understanding and not reason, as being intermediate between opinion and reason.

(Socrates:) You have quite conceived my meaning, I said; and now, corresponding to these four divisions, let there be four faculties in the soul - Reason - answering to the highest, - Understanding - to the second, - Faith (or conviction) to the third, and perception of shadows to the last…

(from Plato’s Republic Book VI, 360 BC )

In short, Plato’s view of the world insists that true knowledge is about things that are immutable. Our senses cannot give us more than a vague unfocused sense of what the ideal, ‘real’ forms of things are. His Allegory of the Cave illustrates what he thought about human understanding… the prisoners (us) see only the shadows of real objects… so, we cannot depend on our senses, we have to use our reason…

Described in Book VII of The Republic

Here is the kind of question that Socrates might ask:

Suppose we say the number “Six”.

What is ‘six’?

Is it six things? Say, six paintings….

Of course, these aren’t paintings. They are electronic images recorded from a photosensitive camera, translated into digital patterns, transmitted by electronic pulses… etc. And the original painting was of an imaginary scene which never existed outside the mind of the artist.

So, what is ‘six’? Six what?

What is the square root of six? Negative six?

Chapter 30.—Of the Perfection of the Number Six, Which is the First of the Numbers Which is Composed of Its Aliquot Parts.These works are recorded to have been completed in six days (the same day being six times repeated), because six is a perfect number,—not because God required a protracted time, as if He could not at once create all things, which then should mark the course of time by the movements proper to them, but because the perfection of the works was signified by the number six.  For the number six is the first which is made up of its own parts, i.e., of its sixth, third, and half, which are respectively one, two, and three, and which make a total of six.  In this way of looking at a number, those are said to be its parts which exactly divide it, as a half, a third, a fourth, or a fraction with any denominator, e.g., four is a part of nine, but not therefore an aliquot part; but one is, for it is the ninth part; and three is, for it is the third.  Yet these two parts, the ninth and the third, or one and three, are far from making its whole sum of nine.  So again, in the number ten, four is a part, yet does not divide it; but one is an aliquot part, for it is a tenth; so it has a fifth, which is two; and a half, which is five.  But these three parts, a tenth, a fifth, and a half, or one, two, and five, added together, do not make ten, but eight.  Of the number twelve, again, the parts added together exceed the whole; for it has a twelfth, that is, one; a sixth, or two; a fourth, which is three; a third, which is four; and a half, which is six.  But one, two, three, four, and six make up, not twelve, but more, viz., sixteen.  So much I have thought fit to state for the sake of illustrating the perfection of the number six, which is, as I said, the first which is exactly made up of its own parts added together; and in this number of days God finished His work.  And, therefore, we must not despise the science of numbers, which, in many passages of holyScripture, is found to be of eminent service to the careful interpreter.  Neither has it been without reason numbered among God's praises, "You have ordered all things in number, and measure, and weight.”

Here’s what St Augustine actually did say about six! City of God – Book IX, Chapter 30St Augustine of Hippo, about 400 AD

http://www.augustinians.org.au/tradition/staugustine.html

St Augustine wasn’t 100% consistent in what he said. Here are two comments from his writings:

Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars and even their size and relative positions, about the predictable eclipses of the sun and moon, the cycles of the years and the seasons, about the kinds of animals, shrubs, stones, and so forth, and this knowledge he hold to as being certain from reason and experience. Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men. If they find a Christian mistaken in a field which they themselves know well and hear him maintaining his foolish opinions about our books, how are they going to believe those books in matters concerning the resurrection of the dead, the hope of eternal life, and the kingdom of heaven, when they think their pages are full of falsehoods and on facts which they themselves have learnt from experience and the light of reason? Reckless and incompetent expounders of Holy Scripture bring untold trouble and sorrow on their wiser brethren when they are caught in one of their mischievous false opinions and are taken to task by those who are not bound by the authority of our sacred books. For then, to defend their utterly foolish and obviously untrue statements, they will try to call upon Holy Scripture for proof and even recite from memory many passages which they think support their position, although they understand neither what they say nor the things about which they make assertion.

St Augustine, about 400 AD, De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, translation by J. H. Taylor in Ancient Christian Writers, Newman Press, 1982, volume 41.

“I desire to know two things only: God and the soul. And nothing more? Absolutely nothing at all.”

St Augustine Soliliquies about 400 AD

….

This is the method I used in building the bridge. Two piles a foot and a half thick, slightly pointed at their lower ends and of lengths dictated by the varying depth of the river, were fastened together two feet apart. We used tackle to lower these into the river, where they were fixed in the bed and driven home with piledrivers, not vertically, as piles usually are, but obliquely, leaning in the direction of the current.  Opposite these, 40 feet lower down the river, two more piles were fixed, joined together in the same way, though this time against the force of the current. These two pairs were then joined by a beam two feet wide, whose ends fitted exactly into the spaces between the two piles of each pair. The pairs were kept apart from each other by means of braces that secured each pile to the end of the beam. So the piles were kept apart, and held fast in the opposite direction, the structure being so strong and the laws of physics such that the greater the force of the current, the more tightly were the timbers held in place.

A series of these piles and beams was put in position and connected by lengths of timber set across them, with poles and bundles of sticks laid on top. The structure was strong, but additional piles were driven in obliquely on the downstream side of the bridge; these were joined with the main structure and acted as buttresses to take the force of the current. Other piles too were fixed a little way upstream from the bridge so that if the natives sent down tree trunks or boats to demolish it, these barriers would lessen their impact and prevent the bridge being damaged. Ten days after the collection of the timber was begun, the work was completed and the army led across.

I left a strong guard at each end of the bridge and then marched into the territory of the Sugambri. Meanwhile deputations came to me from several tribes asking for peace and friendship. I replied courteously and told them to have hostages brought to me. From the moment we had started building the bridge, the Sugambri had been preparing for flight. They were urged to do so by those of the Tencteri and the Usipetes who were with them, and so they left their own country and disappeared into uninhabited forests, taking all their belongings with them. I stayed a few days in their territory, burning all their villages and buildings and cutting down their crops. Then I returned to the country of the Ubians.  I promised this people help if they were harassed by the Suebians, and they gave me the following information. When the Suebians had learned from their scouts that a bridge was being built, they followed their usual custom and called a council. They sent messengers to every part of their country telling their people to leave their oppida [5]: they were to take their women, their children, and all their property into the forests and then all men capable of fighting were to assemble in one place, that chosen being about the middle of their territory. There, the Ubians informed me, the Suebians were waiting for us to arrive and that was the place where they had decided to fight it out.  On receiving this information, I crossed back into Gaul, [6] breaking the bridge behind me. I had accomplished all the objectives that had made me decide to take my army across the Rhine - to intimidate the Germans, to punish the Sugambri, to relieve the Ubians from Suebic harassment. We had spent eighteen days in all across the Rhine and I considered I had done all that honor or interest required.

 

Caesar's War in Gaul 4.16-18 translated by Anne and Peter Wiseman.  http://www.livius.org/caa-can/caesar/caesar_t27.html

Roman-style bridge in Greenwood, Kansas. The Greenwood Historical Society website that features this bridge makes a point of saying that the Roman design for bridges was the common form for bridges right up to the 19thcentury…

Pont du Gard aqueduct in Nimes France, 20 BC and the oldest Roman Bridge in Italy, the Pons Aemilius in Rome, before 100 AD

OK, bottom line?

With what you have seen, do you think that there is much, not much, or any difference between ancient people and modern people?

What do you think were the major differences between people then and people now?

If you think there was little or no difference, then how do you explain the difference between how life progressed then, and how life progresses now….