"'... a lifebringer to Earth...'"
-Poul Anderson, There Will Be Time (New York, 1973), XVI, p. 174.
He continues:
"'I mean, a civilization which just sat down and stared at its own inwardness - how soon would it become stagnant, caste-ridden, poor and nasty? You can't think unless you have something to think about. And this has to come from outside. Doesn't it? The universe is immeasurably larger than any mind.'" (pp. 174-175)
Then he acknowledges:
"'It is well to have those mystics and philosophers. They think and feel, they search out meanings, they ask disturbing questions -'" (p. 175)
What civilization has merely stared at its own inwardness? Any civilization is an interaction between a population and its environment. India has contributed:
mythology;
literature;
philosophical systematizations of logic, atomism and materialism;
hatha yoga;
"karma yoga," Krishna's teaching of nonattached action;
Buddhist meditation;
"Arabic" numerals and the decimal point.
10 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
And I think only "Arabic" numerals and the decimal point really MATTERS. India still did not have the kind of civilization leading to the rise of a true--science which occurred only in the Christian West. Otherwise it was stagnant and burdened by the grotesque caste system and a mythology which was merely several layers of myths morphed together.
I do not share your admiration for Hinduism.
Ad astra! Sean1
Sean,
I think that all those Indian contributions matter. I practice Buddhist meditation which I think is more helpful than anything I was taught earlier in life. Of course India did not invent science. Neither did China etc. I do not think that cultural one-up-manship is appropriate. We have to pool all our resources, especially now when technology threatens life.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
NOR do I agree with the constant demeaning and mocking of the West and Christianity that we have been seeing in recent decades. So, yes, a bit of one-upmanship is appropriate.
Only technology, INTELLIGENTLY applied, will help us. And that means using nuclear power and a REAL space program capable of building an off Earth solar power system for beaming down energy.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Oh yes, technology must be applied intelligently, not abolished! The discussion seems to veer between extremes! All cultures can contribute to our understanding of intelligence and wisdom.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Of course, as India did with "Arabic" numerals and the decimal point. And China contributed gunpowder, the first printing presses of any kind, and (I think) the compass.
And the right kind of culture and philosophy for a true science still arose first with Christianity and the West. To say nothing of Western ideas about the rule of law and the LIMITED state.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Yes, science arose in Europe. That is understood.
Is the Chinese "mandate of Heaven" preferable to the European "divine right of kings"?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
No, not really. Far too briefly, classical Chinese political philosophy held that a dynasty would hold the Mandate of Heaven only as long as it governed reasonably justly and competently.
That "divine right of kings" thing was only a 16th/17 matter worked out by men like James VI and I partly because monarchy as such was being attacked. It was NOT the view of Scholastic philosophers like Thomas Aquinas. Their view was that all gov'ts, whatever form it took, derived ultimately from the consent of the people they governed.
But I discussed this more fully in my article "Political Legitimacy in the Thought of Poul Anderson."
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Paul!
Btw, it was another Briton, Thomas Hobbes, who worked out and advocated the first ideology of the absolute state, totalitarianism, in his book LEVIATHAN, since Plato's THE REPUBLIC. I would call Hobbes's work the germ of Marxist and Nazi totalitarianism.
Another 17th century thing!
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But didn't the French kings also claim divine right?
I am bound to say occasionally that Marx wrote about emancipation, not about totalitarianism, but I really don't want to go back through that argument again every time the issue is mentioned.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Royal philosophers and writers like Marcus Aurelius and James VI / I were rather rare! So, while I'm sure the 16th/17th centuries French kings believed they held power by divine right, we don't see them articulating their conceptions of kingship and the state as James I did.
I THINK Louis XIV of France did write some kind of autobiography, but I would have to check. So maybe he wrote down some of his own views about the state.
Ad astra! Sean
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