IUBio

Cogito ergo sum

Bill Snyder wsnyder at sciti.com
Thu Jun 1 15:15:06 EST 2000


To both Peter and Robert: clearly, I am, at least partially, mistaken about
the example which I chose (robots - but is a golem a robot?- and I should
have remembered the Aristotle reference), but I stand by my fundamental
point.  Certain ideas cannot arise without the appropriate historical
developments.  Try the example of "sub-atomic particle" or "light-year", for
example.  My point was that unspeakablity to historical epoch A, does not
imply unintelligibility; it may just mean that people in that historical
epoch know nothing about it. :)

Bill Snyder

"Peter T. Daniels" <grammatim at worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:3935C0C7.449A at worldnet.att.net...
> Bill Snyder wrote:
> >
> > "Wim Van Nieuwenhoven" <wivani at hotmail.com> wrote in message
> > news:H9Q0Oc8jey61nE3mh+1UCgBM1tlC at 4ax.com...
> > > On Tue, 30 May 2000 09:40:38 -0700, "Bill Snyder" <wsnyder at sciti.com>
> > > wrote:
> > >
> > > >But who knows what forms a Latin speaker in
> > > >ancient Italy would have used to communicate some of those concepts -
> > given
> > > >that they could have possessed them.
> > >
> > > Unintelligible and therefor unspeakable?
> > >
> > No!  Utterly unknown, therefore no occasion to speak about them.  You
can't
> > talk about things of which you have absolutely no knowledge (and saying
that
> > is NOT talking about them but merely referring to them as possible
objects
> > of knowledge, somewhere, someday).  But as we know today robots are
quite
> > intelligible and can easily be spoken about.  They were equally
intelligible
> > in 200BC, and could have easily been spoken of, IF the idea had ever
> > occurred to anyone!  But until certain technological developments had
taken
> > placed, the idea itself did not arise.
>
> There were golems in a culture not technologically all that different
> from Rome; what about Cadmus's army, sprung from the sowing of dragons'
> teeth?
> --
> Peter T. Daniels     grammatim at worldnet.att.net







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