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June 19, 2007

Phenomenological bricks without ontological straw

The magnificently named Scottish Co-operative Wholesale Republic quotes from Michael Bywater's Lost Worlds on the purported wisdom of the ancients. This passage is the first thing I will read to students if I am ever again tricked into teaching an archaeology course. It is also a thought to ponder deeply if you really believe in God; Bronze Age metaphors cannot be the beginning and the ending of an understanding of Creation (via Will who particularly enjoyed the ontology).

The Ancients knew little and understood less. They scratched a living and died like dogs. Gripped by an uncomprehending egocentricity, they believed that the world had been made for them, and they believed that by a crude process of extrapolation: when they needed something, they made it. Finding themselves in a world which suited them to a remarkable degree, they assumed that it had been made for them; obviously, by someone much like them, but much bigger. Unable to understand any laws other than the law of will, they assumed that when something happened in nature, it happened because Nature commanded it. The river dried up because they had offended it; the volcano erupted because the Volcano Giants had not been placated; the harvest failed because someone--this is a bit of a leap of faith, but it leads eventually to Christianity, so it's all okay in the end--had not had his heart torn out and then been ripped limb from limb and his blood poured onto the soil.

In short, the Ancients spent what thinking time they had trying to make phenomenological bricks without ontological straw. They were wrong about almost everything, hopelessly confused sequence and causation, left the scantiest record of their thinking, and croaked in short order.

Also via Will: An excellent suggestion arising from the knighthood bestowed upon Salman Rushdie and the inevitable whining, seething and thinly veiled threats that followed.

At what point does this Islamist sabre-rattling become insulting to those who wish to live in a tolerant, free society?

The call to rescind the Knighthood given to Rushdie has another possible calculated gesture.

Remove Iqbal Sacraine's knighthood.

For it is written in the scrolls, read the whole thing.

Posted by Ghost of a flea at June 19, 2007 06:43 AM

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