[lit-ideas] Re: The 'Near-Eastern' influences on the Greek philosophy, sc...

  • From: John McCreery <mccreery@xxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 15:51:52 +0900

On 2004/04/09, at 22:44, Robert Paul wrote:

>> [T]he Middle Eastern Monotheists' insistence that the Creator is
> somewhere else than inside His Creation and of a radically different
> nature from His Creation. Assimilating this notion in Western
> philosophy made it possible to envision causes that are fundamentally
> different from their effects and not mere abstractions from the
> "natural" categories perceived by our naive senses.<
>
> I don't know quite how to respond to this because I don't know exactly 
> what sort
> of thing John is proposing. The sacred writings before the Common Era 
> suggest
> that God causally intervenes in the world; that he (for so he is 
> characterized)
> has conversations with humans; and that he has a face, and even a 
> body, although
> his anatomy is not richly delineated.

I agree completely. The question is, how the Old Testament's Jehovah, 
an extremely temperamental Deity inclined to all sorts of (from a human 
perspective) arbitrary nastiness (see, for example, the Book of Job) 
become tamed into the Deists' watchmaker, who then wanders off stage, 
leaving Natural Laws in his place. I am suggesting that one way of 
conceiving this process is to see medieval and later thinkers 
struggling to encompass the God of Scripture within the philosophical 
project launched by the Greeks. What Monotheistic religion brings to 
Science is, however, something either underplayed or largely missing in 
classic Greek thought, the notion of causes that do not resemble their 
effects.

This proposition is not, of course, entirely correct: Heraclites' fire, 
Pamenides' ONE BIG THING, and Empedocles' atoms are all examples of 
causes dissimilar from their effects. But these are at best secondary 
themes, largely relegated to the sidelines in the celebration of Plato 
and/or Aristotle that makes up so much of the history of Western 
philosophy, and the big guys both espouse theories in which effects 
resemble their causes. It will be the combination of their rationalism 
+ the notion of an invisible and radically different cause (God, I 
say)+systematic empirical testing that results in Science as we know 
it.

I know that this thought is fuzzy and still rough around the edges. 
That is precisely why, in a scientific spirit, I through it out to see 
what others make of it.

John



John L. McCreery
The Word Works, Ltd.
55-13-202 Miyagaya, Nishi-ku
Yokohama, Japan 220-0006

Tel 81-45-314-9324
Email mccreery@xxxxxxx

"Making Symbols is Our Business"

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