Allerlaatste Avondmaal {for today} Re: 21-3-'04



IDEAS, energy, capacity,
organisation, investigation, constellation,
Museum and Library:
copying & multiplying, gathering &
distribution of KNOWLEDGE ....
&
The beginnings of modern history and
myDiary ..............
&
BOTH the work of research
and the work of dissemination went on
under serious handicaps ...
&
ONE of these
was the great social gap
that separated the philosopher, who was a gentleman,
from the trader and
the artisan.
&
There were glass-workers
and metal-workers in abundance in those days,
but they were not in mental contact
with the thinkers.
&
The glass-worker was making
the most beautifully coloured beads and phials and so forth,
but he never made a Florentine flask
or a lens.
&
Clear glass
does not seem
to have interested him?
The metal-worker made weapons and jewellery,
but he never made a chemical
balance.
The philosopher speculated loftily
about atoms and the nature of things, but he had no practical experience of enamels and pigments and filters
and so forth ..............
HE was not interested in substances.
&
SO Alexandria
in its brief day of opportunity produced no microscopes
and no chemistry!?!
And though Hero invented a steam-engine
it was never set sither to pump or drive a boat or
do any useful thing.
THERE WERE FEW PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS
OF SCIENCE
except in the realm of medicine,
and the progress of science was not stimulated and sustained by the interest and excitement of
practical applications.
THERE WAS, therefore,
nothing to keep the work going
when the intellectual curiosity of Ptolemy I and Ptolemy II
was withdrawn?
The discoveries of the Museum
went on record
in obscure myDi-manuscripts and never,
until the revival of scientific curiosity at the Renaiscence,
reached out to the mass
of mankind!




NOR
did the Library produce
any improvements in bookmaking?
That ancient world had no paper made in definite sizes from rag pulp.
Paper was a Chinese invention and it did not reach the western world
until the ninth century A.D.
The only book materials were parchment and strips of Papyrus reed joined edge to edge: these strips were kept on rolls which were very unwieldy to wind to and fro and read, and very incenveniet for reference
...

IT WAS
these things that prevented the development of
paged and printed books.
Printing itself was known in the world,
it would seem, as early as the Stone Age;
there were seals in ancient Sumeria;
but without abundant paper there was little advantage in printing books,
an improvement that may further have been resisted by
trades-unionism on the part of the copyists
employed!?
Alexandria produced abundant books but not cheap books,
and it never spread knowledge into the population of the ancient world
below the level of a wealthy and influential class.
&
AND SO IT WAS
that this blaze of intellectual enterprise
never reached beyond a small circle of people
in touch with the group of philosophers collected by
the first two Ptolemies?
IT WAS LIKE
the light in a dark lantern
which is shut off from the world
at large ........
WITHIN, the blaze may be blindingly bright,
but nevertheless is goes unseen?!
THE REST OF THE WORLD
went on its old ways
unaware
that the seed of
scientific knowledge that was one day to revolutionise it altogether
had been sown ..............
PRESENTLY a darkness of bigotry fell even upon Alexandria ...
THEREAFTER, for a thousand years of darkness,
the seed that Aristotle had sown
lay hidden ...
THEN it stirred and began to germinate!
In a few centuries it had become that widespread growth of knowledge and
clear ideas that is now changing
the whole of human life?
&
Alexandria
was not the only centre
of Greek intellectual activity in the third century B.C.:
there were many other cities that displayed a brilliant intellectual life amidst the disintegrating fragments of the brief
Empire of Alex?
&
THERE WAS, for example,
the Greek city of Syracuse in Sicily,
where thought and science flourished for two centuries;
there was Pergamum in Asia Minor,
which also had a great
library ...
&
BUT
this brilliant Hellenic world
was now stricken by invasion from the north!
NEW Nordic barbarians, the GAULS,
were striking down along the tracks that had once been followed by
the ancestors of the Greeks and Phrygians and Macedonians ...
THEY raided, shattered and destroyed!
And in the wake of the Gauls
came a new conquering people out of Italy, the Romans,
who gradually subjugated all the western half of the vast realm of Darius and Alexander ...
THEY WERE AN ABLE but unimaginative people
preferring law and profit to either
science and art ...
NEW INVADERS were also coming down out of Central Asia to shatter
and subdue the Seleucid Empire and to cut off
the western world again from India ...
THESE were the Parthians,
hosts of mounted bowmen,
who treated the Graeco-Persian Empire of Persepolis and Susa
in the third century B.C. in much the same fashion
that the Medes and Persians had treated it
in the seventh and sixth ........
&
And there were now
other nomadic peoples who were not so fair and Nordic and Aryanspeaking
but yellow-skinned and black-haired and with a Mongolian speech!
But of these latter people we might tell more in a
subsequent chapter in the near future?
{And since I'm living together with one for the past thirty five years I tend to be a bit prejudiced!?}
Anyway,
there is a 'development taking place'
in groups of human beings since the earliest times;
by coming into contact with one another we tend to learn
and 'copy' each other endlessly;
we have being seeing in myDiary where this might lead to,
how it started and has been happening
all over the world:
how we all are part of this and,
by becoming more aware and conscious
are somehow better able to manage our affairs
{or not?}
of which our
daily myDi-pages are a witness day by day,
person for person and
contact for
contact
.......?
liefdesverdriet
gemeenverwardgaap!bah!nahnahverdrietigcool!erg vrolijkknipoogvrolijk
verliefdliefdesverdrietverliefd
engel
05 jul 2004 - bewerkt op 10 jan 2008 - meld ongepast verhaal
Weet je zeker dat je dit verhaal wilt rapporteren? Ja | Nee
Profielfoto van Asih
Asih, man, 81 jaar
   
Log in om een reactie te plaatsen.   vorige volgende