Seems like the Lord of the Rings video ran its course. I received some excellent suggestions tonight from one of the frequenters of this blog, restlesrolento, saying that I should link together some of my blogs. I will be working on that sometime this week.
In the meantime, I just posted some brief comments on my experience with community life beginning in my early 20s, followed by a one-page outline of chapter 19 in Rick Warren's PDL: Cultivating Community.
His point to ponder is that community requires commitment. I find that the current generation of 20-somethings crave community but resist making the commitment necessary for it to exist. Any thoughts?
Here is the link: Cultivating Community.
Joseph
Showing posts with label Paradigms. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paradigms. Show all posts
Sunday, November 25, 2007
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
THE LORD CHANCELLOR ANNOUNCES A REVOLUTION
In 1620 Francis Bacon published a manifesto. He was critical of endless theoretical philosophizing based on the classical texts and advocated more empirical testing and pragmatic knowledge (Grafton:197).
Both the New World and ancient texts played key roles in Bacon’s dramas of scientific discovery. The title page of the Great Instauration shows a ship sailing past classical columns that represent the pillars of Hercules, the ancient limits of navigation and knowledge. Charles V had taken the pillars as his symbol, with the cautious humanist motto: "Ne plus ultra" "Do not go too far." Bacon kept the pillars but sent his ship past them and lopped off a vital word from the Latin tag: Plus ultra, "Too far is not enough". Discovery, not reading has become the central mode of obtaining important knowledge (Grafton:198).
And anyone who cared to see, as Bacon did, knew exactly at whose doors to lay the blame for the human races general failure to think for itself... The Greeks stood at the beginning of the story, already infected with two sorts of original sin. They had theorized too much and they had known too little. The character of their thought had been fixed in advance by the larger nature of their society. Working competitively in large cities, sophists taught for pay and philosophers for reputation. Both sort of thinker had naturally tried less to find the truth than to win debates. Their philosophy, accordingly, concentrated less on the workings of nature than on the tricks of argument (Grafton:200).
Question: anyone see any parallels with our current situation?
* Taken from Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, London: Harvard University Press, 1992.
Both the New World and ancient texts played key roles in Bacon’s dramas of scientific discovery. The title page of the Great Instauration shows a ship sailing past classical columns that represent the pillars of Hercules, the ancient limits of navigation and knowledge. Charles V had taken the pillars as his symbol, with the cautious humanist motto: "Ne plus ultra" "Do not go too far." Bacon kept the pillars but sent his ship past them and lopped off a vital word from the Latin tag: Plus ultra, "Too far is not enough". Discovery, not reading has become the central mode of obtaining important knowledge (Grafton:198).
And anyone who cared to see, as Bacon did, knew exactly at whose doors to lay the blame for the human races general failure to think for itself... The Greeks stood at the beginning of the story, already infected with two sorts of original sin. They had theorized too much and they had known too little. The character of their thought had been fixed in advance by the larger nature of their society. Working competitively in large cities, sophists taught for pay and philosophers for reputation. Both sort of thinker had naturally tried less to find the truth than to win debates. Their philosophy, accordingly, concentrated less on the workings of nature than on the tricks of argument (Grafton:200).
Question: anyone see any parallels with our current situation?
* Taken from Anthony Grafton, New Worlds, Ancient Texts: The Power of Tradition and the Shock of Discovery, London: Harvard University Press, 1992.
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