Relevant to recent discussion on this blog, the Conquistador, Castelar, thinks that he:
"...can go to my Lord when he walked this earth and fall on my knees -" (Time Patrol, p. 690)
Even if Christ is as imagined by Castelar, would he approve of conquests and crusades? More fundamentally, Castelar has no conception that the historical Jesus might differ significantly from the Christ of his faith. This is not put to the test because the Patrol apprehends Castelar before he is able to wreak much havoc with the timecycle.
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Our Lord had nothing against SOLDIERS as such. Recall His praise of the Roman centurion who asked Him to cure his servant.
And what if Castelar had indeed managed to meet Christ and found Him to be precisely as orthodox Christianity believes Him to be, both God and man? That question is as valid as the one speculating Christ was not as Christians believe Him to be.
Sean
Kaor, Paul!
It would be interesting to see how NON human races on other worlds write or draw numbers. What would a 1,2,3,4,5, etc., written by non humans LOOK like?
Sean
We can look at the variations of how humans have written numbers.
It is likely that non-humans would use something as clumsy as roman numerals before someone realizes the elegance of positional notation with a zero symbol.
Some such positional notation is quite likely to use a different base than 10. Cf: hexadecimal is sometimes used when dealing with the internal details of electronic computing, as well as binary & octal. Then there is the base 20 notation of the Maya numerals. How likely are 6 or 4 finger hands to lead to base 12 or 8 numeral systems?
Even with the base 10 system we use, there is an abundance of difference symbols:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system#Glyph_comparison
Could there be more exotic representations? Might a species with dog level smell sensitivity use different scents in a positional notation system?
Jim,
Rea Anderson's AFTER DOOMSDAY if you haven't already. Translation between alien number systems is basic to the plot.
Paul.
d
Thanks for the recommendation.
Somehow I missed getting that in my long shelf of Poul Anderson stories.
Post a Comment