Date: Wed, 05 Jun 1996 22:02:31 -0400
To: Athena Discuss 
Subject: Re: questions of origin

Scott A. Simmons wrote:

> 2)  I am also still bothered by the neglect which the appeal to determine
> a sense for 'influence' has received.  I think Meadows is justified in asking
> along these lines.  If, indeed, we are to take 'influence' as code for 'cause',
> then we are entering a notoriously difficult area in predicate logic which
> assist us in negotiating these waters?
 
For me, the question of "influence" and what it means in this context
resolves fairly easily, and in a very common-sense way.  I don't think
there is any cause to agonize over it.  I had the experience of visiting
Egypt and Greece both, on the same trip.  Mere days after having stood
surrounded by the massive stone columns at Karnak temple, I stood
surrounded by those at the Acropolis in Greece.  If you would do the same,
I think any question of "influence" would rather quickly resolve itself.
The Greeks copied from the Egyptians.  Independent reinvention is simply
not credible as a hypothesis.  

And, as in this one particular, so also more broadly
over a wide array of fronts.  Diop cited a range of evidence to suggest
that Greek plagiarism was a widespread practice, and theorems that today
are attributed to Archimedes, Pythagoras, Thales, and other Greeks were
known by the Egyptians hundreds of years before.  Moreover, there is 
evidence that these individuals went to Egypt to study with the priests.
Is it mere coincidence?  Hardly, I should think.  So, I don't
think an exegesis on "causality" or some other notoriously
hard philosophical nut is necessary to come to grips with what is at issue in the 
present debate.  Any jury of "12 men good and true"--women also--would have no
difficulty understanding the indictment (plagiarism, ie. unacknowledged
intellectual borrowing), or the evidence adduced.  If the level of 
proof required is "beyond a reasonable doubt", it is possible that one
or other Greek may have to be acquitted.  But if the level of proof 
required is "preponderance of the evidence"--which of two competing
hypotheses appears more likely given the evidence--then the finding of
any jury good and true has to be with the complainant in the case.  For
me, Karnak and the Acropolis say it eloquently: at least in that 
particular, not only did the Greeks copy from the Egyptians, the copy 
was not as good.  

More broadly, I still reflect on the Egyptian seven-point
division of human abilities thus (from an earlier post):

     1    - Ba, the ability to experience omnipresence
                based on the existence of the universal spirit
     2    - Khu, ability to intuit the truth of a
                logical premise, the oracular faculty of
                prophets
     3    - Shekem, ability to affect nature through
                the use of spiritual power
     4    - Ab,
               + the ability to see the interdependence
               between all things, to love
               + the ability to analyze, to see the
               abstract difference between things
               + the ability to think circumspectly, ie.
               to coordinate the activity of all the
               faculties of the spirit, to reason.
     5    - Sahu,
               + imagination and congregative thinking--
               aesthetics
            __________________________________________
            |  + syllogistic, logical and segregative |
            |  thinking                               |
            ------------------------------------------
               + memory and imitative faculty, learning
     6    - Khaibit, the animal soul, emotions, sense
                perception, the sensual, physical movement
     7    - Khab, the physical body which gives us the
                illusion that we are separate beings
 
which the Egyptians were able to intuit, and the complete inadequacy 
of modern Western civilization as to the first three abilities, along
with a fetishistic--with nod here to Mr. Kaufman--obsession with the
the kind of syllogistic mode of thinking that the Egyptians put 
relatively low on the scale of human abilities.
It suggests to me at least the possibility that the Greeks learnt well 
their lessons up to and including that having to do with the
Ab.  They copied, but perhaps as with Karnak/Acropolis, the 
copy was not as good as the original, and we today are inheritors
of what the Greeks, alas, only imperfectly copied from the Egyptians.
 
> Scott A. Simmons

Regards,

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