[MD] QRE: The 4th. level's two interpretations. Par

[skutvik at online.no]

Hi Joe
We don't speak much, but you are a rich source of 
information.

1 Nov:

Squonk had said:
> Well, what you could do, and which you have not tried to do since
> our discussion began, is this: Explain in your own terms how it was
> possible for Cosmology, Geometry and Mathematics to have been used
> hundreds of years before the emergence of SOM? squonk

Squonk is lost as always. SOM emerged as told in ZAMM and the 
"cosmologists" - represented by Socrates and Plato - were its budding 
objectivists. Read ZAMM for chrissake!   

Joe says
> I hope you don¹t mind my butting in.  If my memory serves me, when I
> was studying philosophy in a monastery dedicated the writings of St.
> Thomas Aquinas the subject of metaphysics was on the curriculum.
> Aquinas, at the end of his life, after writing the words and music
> for Corpus Christi, which were incredibly beautiful, was quoted as
> saying ³What I have written was as straw.² My sense of that was he
> didn¹t see much food for thought in his philosophy.

> In his writings Aquinas followed Aristotle¹s Metaphysics.  He boiled
> Aristotle¹s metaphysics down to four words: res (thing), unum (one),
> bonum (good), verum (true), the transcendentals.  The last two were
> indications that a (will) and an (intellect) were a metaphysical
> necessity for Aquinas along with (one) and (thing).  Hence SOM!

Interesting. ZAMM tells about the emergence of (what we know as) 
SOM, not that the actual terms "subjects" and "objects" were part of it 
from the outset. Far from that, what ended up as the S/O distinction 
had a long and winded road before the said terms arrived (the 
mind/matter variety only with Descartes)  

One very learned participant from old - Scott Robert (also) hinted to 
Medieval Times, and Aquinas (1200) as when the S/O first emerged. I 
did not find any such words with Aquinas, but he had Aristotle as his 
source and that fits.   

> Aristotle was certainly acquainted with Pythagoras.  I would imagine
> Aristotle would say that Pythagoras only understood the meaning of a
> single transcendental (Unum), the word for the logic of mathematics.

Sure he knew (about) Pythagoras from 500 BC and Ari from 300. Now, 
as you say, TA boiled down A's metaphysics down and Ari's "SOM" 
was Form/Substance, where form= the illusory, subjective part and 
Substance=the true, objective part.
  
Where Unum, bonum, verum fits I'm not sure, but Wikipedia says:

    Aquinas blended Greek philosophy and Christian doctrine by 
    suggesting that rational thinking and the study of nature, like 
    revelation, were valid ways to understand truths pertaining to 
    God. According to Aquinas, God reveals himself through 
    nature, so to study nature is to study God. The ultimate goals 
    of theology, in AquinasTM mind, are to use reason to grasp the 
    truth about God and to experience salvation through that truth.  

Thus some 1500 years after Aristotle SOM was so embedded that it 
went without saying that "rational thinking" (objectivity over subjectivity) 
had become the only valid approach. It also shows Christianity's 
"tearing" its Semitic roots was in progress (i.e: it becoming an 
intellectual patterns leaving its social parent). Moreover "..God reveals 
himself through nature". See, SOM's culture/nature was established, 
SOM had become the "glasses" everything was seen through.

Bodvar