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

  • From: "Peter D. Junger" <junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 10 Apr 2004 10:55:43 -0400

John McCreery writes:

: 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.

I think that it is fair to say that in Buddhist philosophy causes
do not necessarily resemble their effects---although they may
sometimes do so---except to the extent that they are all impermanent
and all without anything like an essence.  (This is an addendum
to my earlier posting in this thread.)

On the other hand, I wonder what it means to say that in Science
causes do not resemble their effects.  Is this an appeal to
some sort of Cartesian mind/body dualism, where mind is something
other than matter?  Or does it have to do with the difficulties
in reconciling quantum mechanics with gravity?

--
Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH
 EMAIL: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx    URL:  http://samsara.law.cwru.edu   
        NOTE: junger@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx no longer exists
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