[MD] Babylonian intellectuals

[skutvik at online.no]

DMB, Arlo, All

17 July 

Arlo said to Bo:
> Would you say the mathematics of the Babylonians and Egyptians were
> "social patterns"? Do you think modern mathematics is a "social
> pattern"? Can you point to the differentiating features of these
> mathematics that would indicate one being "social" and the other being
> "intellectual"? Also, there is evidence that several ancient
> (pre-Greek) cultures were able to mathematically and astronomically
> predict and describe precession. Would you say these precessional
> calculations and modellings were "social patterns"?
 
dmb says:
> Their calculations were impressive and remarkably accurate but I still
> think there is a difference between Egyptian mathematicians and what
> we'd call intellectual. Those mathematicians were priests, actually,
> and math was something like an elite form of spiritual knowledge.
> Their calculations were not about scientific accuracy but ritualistic
> precision and a good harvest. River and stars were gods back then.
> Also these calculations were based on observations and were relatively
> concrete. By our standards it was just geometry and some fancy
> counting. Not that we're any smarter, but we live with a much greater
> degree of abstraction. I can see how it could be tempting to project
> that onto them, especially when their mathematical achievements are
> taken out of their religious context, but their highest priest
> probably didn't know much more than a fifth grader. Well okay, let's
> say a really, really smart fifth grader. 

Spot on Dave and thanks for not letting the "debunk Bo" urge get the 
best of you. I admire you for that.

> You can literally see how writing becomes increasingly abstract as it
> evolves through time. I mean, if you put the symbols in a row you can
> see, for example, how a picture of a cow gets simpler and simpler
> until it can no longer be called a representation but a symbol, an
> abstract symbol. Interestingly, in the West this is how letters were
> born, rather than words. Now each symbol stands for a sound rather
> than a thing and you learn to decode all this very quickly, as you're
> doing now. It's all pretty damn abstract and we just take it for
> granted. Looking back at school exams and such, we can even see that
> the level of abstraction has changed in the last one hundred years.
> Wonder what the literacy rate was in Babylon? Outside of
> accountant-priests, I'll bet it was nearly zero. 

Agree!!

> I don't know how to draw the line, exactly, but the social level can
> USE symbols but intellect is more like the ability to manipulate the
> symbols themselves, to do skilled work with the symbols themselves. It
> seems to me that the level of abstraction is key to the difference
> between social and intellectual levels. That is in terms of the
> quality of intelligence or thinking itself. But historically speaking,
> it's also a matter of which values are in charge, which are the
> dominate values in any given culture. In the case of ancient Egypt,
> mathematical knowledge was a rare secret. It was woven into the
> context of their religious beliefs and was used to serve social level
> values. 

Agreement up to the point of "skilled manipulation of symbols" where 
you make an effort to accommodate Pirsig's latest definition of intellect 
to fit.  Symbols (vs what is symbolized) and abstractions (vs concrete) 
are part of intellect's S/O. In this context that letters and words - 
language itself - is an abstraction of something else (not necessarily 
concrete in tactile sense) but something else NOT language.  Thus 
Pirsig's definition should have been: "Intellectuality occur when the 
difference between symbols and what is symbolize is observed". 
Because this was/is NOT observed on the social level where language 
is a means to reach the gods or forces that rules over existence. 
Rituals like prayer and sacraments are major items in "social" 
religions, Buddhists don't pray.   

> Fast forward to the time of Plato, and you start to see speculation
> about what was eternal in the world, in the affairs of men. You see
> questions like "what is justice?" and "what is beauty?" "Truth" and
> the "best way to live" was now something to wonder about rather than
> inherit. I think it happened because the ancient world got small.

Spot on up to the "small world" point It was because the Greeks had 
begun the first gropings for the intellectual reality, the first break with 
social reality was the search for "principles" even more eternal than 
the immortal gods. And the rest is history, intellectual reality came to 
its first S/O stance with Appearance/Truth, but would sprout all the 
countless intellectual S/O dichotomies we know. 

> A single person could see and know the Gods and languages of several
> cultures. And compare them. Thought itself becomes an object of study,
> then abstract conceptual tools are developed for that task. The
> complaints about scientific objectivity in ZAMM seem to be about way
> too much abstraction, the kind where you kinda lose touch. 

Like Pirsig you possibly saw what way this was leading and hurriedly 
disappear behind a smoke screen. Anyway a promising development.

Bodvar