ORIGENS

[Raulgr]

Originally posted by scigirl:

. . . So what about religion? At some point, humans started becoming more aware of their mortality, and started believing in such things as the afterlife, and supernatural beings. I tend to think this trait evolved several times, since humans were so spread out early on. And this trait has been maintained for thousands of years in nearly every tribe or culture we study. Why? . . .

scigirl,

It's a good question (one I've asked myself).

Let me give you my uncomplicated take on it. It seems to me that all religious thinking and, more generally, metaphysical thinking has its origin in mythology, early man's means of making sense of nature. Imagine, if you will, the first hominid contemplation of the sun. The sun is a commonplace object for us and no source of fear. But, for a mind that has no explanation for it, it is, I think, a powerful and fearful object, one that demands explanation. Explanations, after all, are the balm for our fears. At some level, the absence of explanations might even be viewed as a working definition of insanity. So, when you don't see the sun as a synthesis of helium from hydrogen, you think of it as the golden chariot being drawn through the heavens, and you enlist the support of your bretheren in that idea to further assuage your disquiet about it. Hence, mythology provided the necessary answers where there were, otherwise, none.

I suspect that the 6,000-year survival of those first mythologies (now greatly expanded and convoluted) only bears testimony to the survival of at least some of those original fears.

I have made my peace with REALITY, and, in so doing, have become fearless.

[Eddier1]

Raul said:

"I have made my peace with REALITY, and, in so doing, have become fearless". [/b][/quote]

Hi Buddy,

The debate you had with El_Jibaro/AnotherRican, with the latter offering the Dialogue (albeit fictional) between Darwin and Socrates as proof that evolutionary change has not been explained by Darwin and, therefore, Darwinism only begs the question of such change and is therefore logically invalid, left you with the task of rebutting their anti-evolution claim.

If you have none, that is, you are stumped by the argument advanced by relying on the fictionalized Dialogue, then they in effect have won that debate. However, I have been waiting to read your rebuttal of it which would demonstrate the viability of continuing to support Darwinian Evolution. Have you been giving much thought to doing that, that is, presenting your opposed argument which would "snatch victory from the jaws of defeat" for you? I am optimistic that you have been giving it much thought and will offer your rebuttal soon. We supporters of Darwinian Evolution wouldn't want those religionists going around saying you are afraid to debate them further, because you have nothing that could counter that anti-evolutionary change argument that they threw at you. Don't you think Raul?

BTW, the thread I am referring to is found in the Politics forum, under the topic "Discourso de Ruben Berrios Martinez al recibir el Premio de Honor del Ateneo". And it is still a recent hot topic because of your debate with those two religionists.

Regards,
EddieR



[Edited by Eddier1 on 12th November 2001 at 08:50]

[Suki]

Originally posted by Raulgr

scigirl,

It's a good question (one I've asked myself).

Let me give you my uncomplicated take on it. It seems to me that all religious thinking and, more generally, metaphysical thinking has its origin in mythology, early man's means of making sense of nature. Imagine, if you will, the first hominid contemplation of the sun. The sun is a commonplace object for us and no source of fear. But, for a mind that has no explanation for it, it is, I think, a powerful and fearful object, one that demands explanation. Explanations, after all, are the balm for our fears. At some level, the absence of explanations might even be viewed as a working definition of insanity. So, when you don't see the sun as a synthesis of helium from hydrogen, you think of it as the golden chariot being drawn through the heavens, and you enlist the support of your bretheren in that idea to further assuage your disquiet about it. Hence, mythology provided the necessary answers where there were, otherwise, none.

I suspect that the 6,000-year survival of those first mythologies (now greatly expanded and convoluted) only bears testimony to the survival of at least some of those original fears.

I have made my peace with REALITY, and, in so doing, have become fearless.

Reality as we perceive it Raul can be an illusion.....natural laws are objective truth and I have no dispute to that. But, to assume that your interpretation of reality is the REALITY and therefore fearlessness is your natural state is a bit soberbia for me. Though I do think you have a lovely, wild fearless streak to you. (lol).

Regarding the Human Emotion posting, Yautiawoman2 thinks that emotion and how people deal with it and experience it is completely encapsulated in social constructions of reality and therefore should not be analyzed strictly through genetics and genetic engineering theories. Can a human child grow and develop normally without social interaction on a daily basis? The few who are isolated in orphanages with little interaction either perish or have severely distorted emotional reactions in which they can't manage or interpret their own emotional responses in a healthy or even functional way......so social constructions of reality are the determining factor in developing our REALITY to a great degree.....that dovetails neatly with Sapir and Worf's and F. Boas theories on "Linguistics" and how language acquisition and how once we speak fluently a language and learn its complete contexts we start changing our perceptions of realities or at least expand them to include other world views of how to interpret it all.{Reality that is}.

Noam Chomsky's discourses on language and perceptions of reality and even emotional reactions are interesting as well....just food for thought.

Philosophy is an integral part of trying to figure out the human experience in all its facets including genetics, and social science theories of human life.

Ojala que estes gozando por alla,

Suki.

[Raulgr]

Originally posted by Suki
Reality as we perceive it Raul can be an illusion.....natural laws are objective truth and I have no dispute to that. But, to assume that your interpretation of reality is the REALITY and therefore fearlessness is your natural state is a bit soberbia for me. Though I do think you have a lovely, wild fearless streak to you. (lol).

Regarding the Human Emotion posting, Yautiawoman2 thinks that emotion and how people deal with it and experience it is completely encapsulated in social constructions of reality and therefore should not be analyzed strictly through genetics and genetic engineering theories. Can a human child grow and develop normally without social interaction on a daily basis? The few who are isolated in orphanages with little interaction either perish or have severely distorted emotional reactions in which they can't manage or interpret their own emotional responses in a healthy or even functional way......so social constructions of reality are the determining factor in developing our REALITY to a great degree.....that dovetails neatly with Sapir and Worf's and F. Boas theories on "Linguistics" and how language acquisition and how once we speak fluently a language and learn its complete contexts we start changing our perceptions of realities or at least expand them to include other world views of how to interpret it all.{Reality that is}.

Suki,

I know you have mentioned Kaku previously - haven't had time for him yet. Can you give me his premise? What is his education? What work has he done?

Are you saying, then, that there is nothing that we can know? You'll note that I said that I am FEARLESS. I didn't say that I am CARELESS. Actually, nothing of what I believe is the product of my interpretation. I take the consensus interpretations given to me by the worldwide scientific community. What that community does is look at evidence and draw conclusions, or, in the case of theoretical physics, they propose theories and test them for consistency with nature. They are not CARELESS. Both the evidence and conclusions are published and subject to relentless peer review.

Scientific investigation and discovery invloves only the application of logic to the interpretation of evidence, tempered by what is already known. It is, therefore neither langauage specific nor colored by social conditioning. That is why we don't have eastern scientists and western scientists. They speak but one language, that of inductive reasoning and mathematics. It is what they have concluded that I take as REALITY.

I have already said that we are, at any point in time, the product of our experiences, including our emotional experiences, up to that point. To the extent that our reasoning is clouded by emotion, our perceptions might indeed be illusion. Any idea has only two possibilities. Either it is true, or it is not. The trick, of course, is to distinguish illusion from REALITY.

Regards, Raul

[Eddier1]

Originally posted by Suki

Reality as we perceive it Raul can be an illusion.....natural laws are objective truth and I have no dispute to that. But, to assume that your interpretation of reality is the REALITY and therefore fearlessness is your natural state is a bit soberbia for me. Though I do think you have a lovely, wild fearless streak to you. (lol).

Regarding the Human Emotion posting, Yautiawoman2 thinks that emotion and how people deal with it and experience it is completely encapsulated in social constructions of reality and therefore should not be analyzed strictly through genetics and genetic engineering theories. Can a human child grow and develop normally without social interaction on a daily basis? The few who are isolated in orphanages with little interaction either perish or have severely distorted emotional reactions in which they can't manage or interpret their own emotional responses in a healthy or even functional way......so social constructions of reality are the determining factor in developing our REALITY to a great degree.....that dovetails neatly with Sapir and Worf's and F. Boas theories on "Linguistics" and how language acquisition and how once we speak fluently a language and learn its complete contexts we start changing our perceptions of realities or at least expand them to include other world views of how to interpret it all.{Reality that is}.

Noam Chomsky's discourses on language and perceptions of reality and even emotional reactions are interesting as well....just food for thought.

Philosophy is an integral part of trying to figure out the human experience in all its facets including genetics, and social science theories of human life.

Ojala que estes gozando por alla,

Suki.

Suki the most interesting theory I have heard from colleagues in your speciality of cultural anthropology, places the primary source of cultural emotional developments, not in languages, which basically are genetic patterns endemic to ideation with its archtypes of conceptual thought and vocal expressiveness, but instead in economic determinants such as the social actions of trade, commerce, and negociations necessary for survival. Out of these economic necessities, culture evolves through artisans who paint, sculpt, and create dance and music, most of which is in demand because of the rituals of primitive superstitions concretized in religionist emotions and hunting/fertility emotions, as well as personal preferences(Such as death masks, images of tribal figures, family members and animals that are hunted).

Now Sapir, Worf, Boas, and Chomsky's theories based on linguistics don't take into its scope the use of items and tools garnered from or created by artisans in the external world and their impact on creating a culture.
Voice as a "tool"? (whatever that may be) is still categorized in a class by itself. Because all instruments and tools that serve in making culture require manual manipulations, and voice does not. In that sense, the earliest cultural people can be said to be MANIPULATORS rather than merely vocalizers of grunts and/or sounds that could be termed as words of a language.

But you could go more deeply into this because it is one of your fields of expertise, although you are mostly involved with language, translations, and fluency in many idioms. As for me, I have for many years accepted the economic determinant as the prime mover of Cultural Development.

Regards,
EddieR

[Suki]

Michio Kaku is professor of theoretical physics at the City College of the City University of New York. He graduated from Harvard and received his Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley. He is the author of "Beyond Einstein" (with Jennifer Trainer), "Quantum Field Theory: A Modern Introduction", and an "Introduction to Superstrings". He has also a weekly hour-long science program on the radio for the past ten years (and more by now).

You will like "Hyperspace" Raul.....just a suggestion.


Saludos to my objective friend,

Suki

[Suki]

Originally posted by Eddier1

Suki the most interesting theory I have heard from colleagues in your speciality of cultural anthropology, places the primary source of cultural emotional developments, not in languages, which basically are genetic patterns endemic to ideation with its archtypes of conceptual thought and vocal expressiveness, but instead in economic determinants such as the social actions of trade, commerce, and negociations necessary for survival. Out of these economic necessities, culture evolves through artisans who paint, sculpt, and create dance and music, most of which is in demand because of the rituals of primitive superstitions concretized in religionist emotions and hunting/fertility emotions, as well as personal preferences(Such as death masks, images of tribal figures, family members and animals that are hunted).

Now Sapir, Worf, Boas, and Chomsky's theories based on linguistics don't take into its scope the use of items and tools garnered from or created by artisans in the external world and their impact on creating a culture.
Voice as a "tool"? (whatever that may be) is still categorized in a class by itself. Because all instruments and tools that serve in making culture require manual manipulations, and voice does not. In that sense, the earliest cultural people can be said to be MANIPULATORS rather than merely vocalizers of grunts and/or sounds that could be termed as words of a language.

But you could go more deeply into this because it is one of your fields of expertise, although you are mostly involved with language, translations, and fluency in many idioms. As for me, I have for many years accepted the economic determinant as the prime mover of Cultural Development.

Regards,
EddieR

Yes cultural anthropologists tackle those thorny issues true...there is an interesting technique for analyzing social development it is called synergetics. It thinks that when a society is disrupted by externally foreign concepts that threaten to revolutionize the entire social system, one of two things occur Eddie. First possibility is that it disrupts the normal customs, patterns, belief systems and economic activity etc. so badly that it effectively makes the old thoughts values and beliefs obsolete and immediately discardible and traumatizes the old "mythology" as Raul is fond of saying....or it adapts the new concept and remakes itself using what is functional and what is non-functional is quickly abandoned....all societies are in a constant flux. But societies who are not participating in consumerism, modernity and capitalism in today's global society are being pressured and aggressively isolated and eliminated on a mass scale. For the cultural anthropologists this is the equivalent of having for example a botanist know that half of his plants are being burned and exterminated before they can even enter the taxonomic process and be classified much less analyzed and studied for potential human consumption or application possibilities.

It is true to a great degree what yousay about linguistics Eddie. Language acquisition is a fairly mechanical process in terms of brain function....but syntax and language itself is incredibly complex and the diversity of grammatical structures are amazing especially little known Native American languages and Indigenous languages in general....for example plurals in Hopi : Hokam is singular Hohokam is plural. So if you want to pluralize anything in Hopi you need to repeat the first syllable of any word....different than the Indoeuropean style of adding -s or -es at the endings of nouns to pluralize them. Kikuyu a Kenyan language spoken by about over 11 million people in Africa have a different technique....what and why is this diversity there and why do they construct their cultures and beliefs through such different patterns and grammars? There are brilliant theorists out there working on this very dilemma. How about the Chinese (Mandarin variety) where you can say table- or tables and plurals dont exist. The context allows the classification by default.....

What do you think Eddier1 interesting stuff aint it?

Saludos de Denver,

Suki