27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Measuring Progress by the Cost of Light
Time is not the only life-enriching resource granted to us by technology. Another is light. Light is so empowering that it serves as the metaphor of choice for a superior intellectual and spiritual state: enlightenment. In the natural world we are plunged into darkness for half of our existence, but human-made light allows us to take back the night for reading, moving about, seeing people’s faces, and otherwise engaging with our surroundings. The economist William Nordhaus has cited the plu...Folksonomies: human progress quantification
Folksonomies: human progress quantification
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notes10 MAR 2017 by ideonexus
The Other Men
This planet, being essentially of the terrestrial type, had produced a race that was essentially human, though, so to speak, human in a different key from the terrestrial. These continents were as variegated as ours, and inhabited by a race as diversified as Homo sapiens. All the modes and facets of the spirit manifested in our history had their equivalents in the history of the Other Men. As with us, there had been dark ages and ages of brilliance, phases of advancement and of retreat, cultu... 1 notes
notes19 JUN 2011 by ideonexus
A Brief History of People Resisting Technological Advance...
Look at how often change is fought in history. Here’s an example
that always tickles me. The chain of events back in the twelfth
century that set Europe going economically after the Dark Ages
was essentially the textile revolution. A new loom came in from
Arab Spain. It had foot pedals, which left the weaver’s hands free
to weave faster and make more cloth cheaper. The Dutch weavers
smashed the thing up because it would have put people out of work.
(That was a new idea in the twelfth cent... 1 notes
notesEven though the advances ultimately benefit society as a whole, people resist and riot because they are put out of work or may lose power from the change.
19 APR 2011 by ideonexus
Evolution from Inner-Philsophy to Natural Philosophy
There have always been two ways of looking for truth. One is to find concepts which are beyond challenge, because they are held by faith or by authority or the conviction that they are self-evident. This is the mystic submission to truth which the East has chosen, and which dominated the axiomatic thought of the scholars of the Middle Ages. So St. Thomas Aquinas holds that faith is a higher guide to truth than knowledge is: the master of medieval science puts science firmly into second place.... 1 notes
notesSummary of human culture moving from introspectively-revealed knowledge of the Dark Ages to the outward-viewing philosophy of naturalism.
30 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
Atheist and Religious Origins of Secular Humanism
Atheism and freethought trace their roots to ancient Greek philosophy, with its emphasis on rational inquiry and curiosity about the workings of nature. Other sources included early Chinese Confucianism, ancient Indian materialists, and Roman Stoics, Epicureans, and Skeptics. Submerged during the Dark Ages, freethought re-emerged in the Renaissance. With the Enlightenment, rationalist and empiricist thinkers laid foundations for the modern scientific outlook. Utilitarians emancipated morality... 1 notes
notesA list of the shoulders on which secular humanism is built philosophically and spiritually.
29 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
The Rationale for Doomsday Chests
After the fall of the Roman Empire in Western Europe, much of what we consider "civilization" ceased to be. Literacy, medicine, science, agriculture, engineering, astronomy, governance, all went into decline or regression for the hundreds of years which we now call "The Dark Ages".
During this period monasteries were practically the only repositories of scholarship and learning. One historian notes that monks were not only the best educated members of society, by far, but were often the only...
1 During the Dark Ages, the Human race came precipitously close to losing all knowledge permanently when the black plague almost wiped out the scholarly religious classes.
29 MAR 2011 by ideonexus
The Need for a Scientific Monastary
In the Dark Ages, the religious orders of monasteries were the bearers of our culture. Much of this knowledge was contained in books, and the monks took care of them and read them as part of their discipline. Sadly, science is no longer a calling where scientists are the guardians of knowledge, but rather has become a narrowly specialized employment. Apart from a few isolated institutions, like the National Center for Atmospheric Research, science has no equivalent of the monasteries. So, who... 1 notes
notesThere needs to be an essential science book cataloging the most basic principles of science and some kind of order of monks to treasure it.
