{ "export": { "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/urth/2807", "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it. Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.", "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'" }, "archive": "urth", "thread": { "id": 2807, "subject": "Mythopathy and Natural Philosophy", "messages": 1, "voices": 1, "first": "2001-08-24T12:35:49+00:00", "last": "2001-08-24T12:35:49+00:00" }, "messages": [ { "message_id": "", "from": { "name": "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes", "address": "ddanehy at siebel.com" }, "date": "2001-08-24T12:35:49+00:00", "subject": "(urth) Mythopathy and Natural Philosophy", "in_reply_to": null, "reply_link": null, "blocks": [ { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Dan-with-no-discernable-last-name (and my apologies to both him\nand Dan Parmenter for misattributing) wrote among the usual Other \nGood Stuff:" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I'm hacking my way through Joseph Campbell right now and wish\nthat I had picked up Frazer instead. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "I've been stalled in the middle of Volume 2 of \"The Masks of God\" for\nabout three years. I wish I knew how he managed to make such interesting\nstuff so dull while still writing pretty well!" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "I keep thinking - more stories, less speculation - " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... well, that's a big part of it, of course ..." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "Myths to Campbell seem to be primarily religio-political works;\nthey appeal to us \"universally\" because and as long as we\nmaintain our allegiance to the ideas that spawned them." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "H'mmm. I wonder why the Norse myths appeal to me so much more \nstrongly than the Greco-Roman myths, then, with the Egyptian\nmyths somewhere in between? I can't help wondering what \"ideas\"\nI'm showing my allegiance to here. \n\nFrankly, I think it's more because I was over-exposed to the \nclassical myths as a kid (and especially as a student), but \nhad to seek the Norse ones out for myself. Again, the Egyptian \nmyths fall in between: I was introduced to them in junior high, \nbut didn't have to deal with years of English teachers \npointing out grotesquely obvious \"allusions\" and references \non the assumption that most of the students wouldn't recognize \nthem otherwise. I have trouble reading any Greek myth without \nannoying memories of pastoral poetry (for which I have not \ntaste whatsoever -- I wish all those nymphs would just \nstrangle all those importunate shepherds!) coming to my mind.\n\nBut, but ... I have to admit the main reason I like the Norse\nmyths _so_ much is the worldview. I don't know if it's anything\nas simple as \"ideas;\" it's the whole way of looking at life\nas a losing battle that you have to fight anyway, that chaos\n_will_ win in the end, but somehow the struggle against it is\nnot quite senseless. There's nothing in either the Egyptian\nor the Greek way of looking at things that moves me quite the\nway that does. (The world as French Foreign Legion...?)" }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "How, if the ancients were so sold on reason, did they\nmanage to be so ridiculously wrong about the way the\nworld was put together? And how did the moderns manage\nto get everything (we hope) so right? The standard answer\n(and I'm inclined, personally, to think that the ancients\nweren't so ridiculously wrong and the moderns not\nnecessarily spot on) ..." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "... I'm inclined to agree; and further to observe that a lot\nof the stuff the ancients are popularly supposed to be wrong\nabout, they weren't. We all know the Greeks knew the world \nwas round and calculated its diameter pretty accurately. Not\nas many people are aware that the standard geocentric model\nof the earth was actually pretty right in its sense of the\nscale of the universe -- that is, the idea that the Earth \ncould, for all practical purposes, be considered a geometric\npoint wrt the larger unvierse.\n\nYes, I believe that if we go point-for-point against the\nancients, where we disagree, we are (in general) the more\nlikely to be right. But I think we'd disagree on far less than\nmost people assume." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "... is that modern science is experimental and ancient\nscience \"merely\" observational. " }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or, to put it even more simply: Reason does not equal\nempiricism. \n\nThe entire project of modern science is based on empiricism, \nwhich (a) really didn't appear as a useful model until, what,\nabout the time of Francis Bacon, and (b) is itself based on \na set of unproven and unprovable assumptions about how the \nworld works (which I think could best be summed up as the \nidea that nature plays fair) -- assumptions that seem to be \nvalid only within a few orders of magnitude of our own scale \nof things, but break down very small (say, around where \nHeisenberg and Plank get involved) and very large (say, \naround where Schwarzchild and Chandrasekar get involved)." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "In other words Modern Reason expects a certain dirty\nhands-on interaction with the world that probably seemed\nunecessarily messy to the ancients. And this is why I\nthink the detective story is a strictly modern fairy-tale:" }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Heh. Chandler's classic line, \"down these mean streets a\nman must go,\" came bouncing into my head right here." }, { "kind": "quote", "depth": 1, "text": "the detective has to contend with a real criminal. For\nall that Dupin prefers to solve crimes without leaving\nhis smoke-filled room he still has to put the solution\nto the test." }, { "kind": "text", "depth": 0, "text": "Or, more Lupine: Nero Wolfe has to arrange his \"capers\" to\nprove what he already knows, to the satisfaction of the\npolice and/or his client.\n\n--Dan'l" } ] } ] }