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non-Western questions (was Re: Poll results)

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Ben Weiss

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Jul 15, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/15/96

On 11 Jul 1996 22:17:42 GMT,
Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
>Joseph K Wright (jkw...@pitt.edu) wrote:
>
>(snippage)
>
>: The "scientific method" (...) may not be a uniquely Western phenomenon,
>: but it it primarily so. The entire concept of the hard sciences is a
>: Western creation.
>
>It seems to me that Joe Wright, in these sentences, has done as good a job
>as Matt Colvin ever has, of demonstrating both the objective superiority of
>Western thought, and its greater "relevance" to our own lives.
>
I don't think we can talk about "objective superiority" when Native
Americans cured illnesses with herbs containing the exact chemical
properties of modern medicines at the same time that Western thought
was using leeches to draw out evil humors. And the fact that Western
*scientific* thought has undeniably been the predominant influence in
today's world does not imply any disproportionate value for Western
art or literature.
Ben

Peter Keshavan

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Jul 17, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/17/96

Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:

: I don't think we can talk about "objective superiority" when Native

: Americans cured illnesses with herbs containing the exact chemical
: properties of modern medicines at the same time that Western thought
: was using leeches to draw out evil humors.

We sure can. If what you assert is true, then at that period in history,
Siberian-American medicine was objectively superior to that practiced in
Europe at the same time. A few centuries later, things were a little
different. See below.

BTW, if those herbal treatments and their practictioners' skills were
equivalent to those of modern medicine, why does the University of
Minnesota med school teach the curing of illnesses by the latter?

: And the fact that Western

: *scientific* thought has undeniably been the predominant influence in
: today's world does not imply any disproportionate value for Western
: art or literature.

Science neither is practiced, nor was developed, in a vacuum. For it
to spring into existence, there are certain prerequisite philosophical
currents which must be flowing. I don't know about the claims you make
on behalf of Siberian-American medicine, but I do know that there was a
time when Chinese science, Arabic classical scholarship, Indian math, and
perhaps other fields studied by oppressed cultures, were not nearly so well
advanced in Europe. Some time between then and now, something happened.

Scientific thought (as if there's really such a thing as "Western"
scientific thought) is both more and less than the predominant influence
in today's world. Less, in that a whole lot more people watch alien autopsy
idiocy on TV than could tell you what a parsec is. More, in that there's
more to it that simply being an "influence," predominant or not. It is
objectively superior to other ways of going about trying to answer certain
questions. I'd rather be treated with modern medical technology by an MD
than with leeches by a barber, or with roots and bark by a witch doctor;
wouldn't you?

We managed to get to transplants, from leeching. Unless you insist on
denying the notion of objective superiority, you must grant that that's a
pretty big difference, and a pretty impressive accomplishment. Want to
appreciate that difference, and the magnitude of the achievement? Want to
understand, not only how we got from there to here, but what it was like
along the way? To the extent that you do, I submit that Western art and
literature might have something unique to offer you. To the extent that you
don't, I submit that you are a Philistine.

Of course there's a whole lot more to art and literature than that. But
what I just discussed is unique to that of the West. Therefore, even if
there are absolutely no other reasons for us to accord higher value to the
Western humanities (and I think there are many), the claim that science "does
not imply any disproportionate value for Western art or literature" is simply
mistaken.

-Peter Keshavan

Ben Weiss

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Jul 18, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/18/96

On 17 Jul 1996 19:41:56 GMT,

Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
>Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
>
>: I don't think we can talk about "objective superiority" when Native
>: Americans cured illnesses with herbs containing the exact chemical
>: properties of modern medicines at the same time that Western thought
>: was using leeches to draw out evil humors.
>
>We sure can. If what you assert is true, then at that period in history,
>Siberian-American medicine was objectively superior to that practiced in
>Europe at the same time. A few centuries later, things were a little
>different. See below.

"Siberian-American?!?" I realize you're trying to be offensive,
Peter, but the descendants of those Siberians have been on this
continent for at least 20,000 years, compared to a maximum of 400 for
Europeans, Africans and Asians (and far less for most). They also
didn't displace anyone else. They deserve to be recognized as
indigenous or Native American. (The most proper term, at least when
dealing with Algonquian cultures such as predominate in my neck of the
woods, is Anishinaabe, meaning "original people.")

>BTW, if those herbal treatments and their practictioners' skills were
>equivalent to those of modern medicine, why does the University of
>Minnesota med school teach the curing of illnesses by the latter?

Because much of the indigenous medical knowledge was wiped out in the
genocide of Native American peoples.

>: And the fact that Western
>: *scientific* thought has undeniably been the predominant influence in
>: today's world does not imply any disproportionate value for Western
>: art or literature.
>
>Science neither is practiced, nor was developed, in a vacuum. For it
>to spring into existence, there are certain prerequisite philosophical
>currents which must be flowing. I don't know about the claims you make
>on behalf of Siberian-American medicine, but I do know that there was a
>time when Chinese science, Arabic classical scholarship, Indian math, and
>perhaps other fields studied by oppressed cultures, were not nearly so well
>advanced in Europe. Some time between then and now, something happened.

Yup--Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture
back by centuries by destroying their economies.

>[Western] Scientific thought...is

>objectively superior to other ways of going about trying to answer certain
>questions. I'd rather be treated with modern medical technology by an MD
>than with leeches by a barber, or with roots and bark by a witch doctor;
>wouldn't you?

I've personally had better results with homeopathy than anything else.
Your dismissal of other types of medicine ("witch doctor," equation
with leeching) ignores the fact that the same result can come through
different avenues of discovery. Yes, I concede that *certain*
questions are best answered through the scientific method, and there
are certain problems for which I would definitely choose Western
medical technology above anything else (particularly at the point of
crisis, e.g. open-heart surgery). However, Western medical science
also has its downside, with which my family has had *plenty* of
experience, and the West is just now discovering that the cultures it
nearly obliterated through colonization sometimes achieved equally good
results with fewer side effects.

>We managed to get to transplants, from leeching. Unless you insist on
>denying the notion of objective superiority, you must grant that that's a
>pretty big difference, and a pretty impressive accomplishment.

No argument. We got there in part by appropriating everyone else's
capital and, in some cases, knowledge.

Want to
>appreciate that difference, and the magnitude of the achievement? Want to
>understand, not only how we got from there to here, but what it was like
>along the way? To the extent that you do, I submit that Western art and
>literature might have something unique to offer you. To the extent that you
>don't, I submit that you are a Philistine.

No, I'm a Jew. :) You offer one valid reason to study Western art and
literature, but not to venerate them above other cultures' art and
literature. The achievements of Western culture in one field do not
lend a golden glow of moral superiority to everything Western, any
more than the superiority of the Incas at agricultural science
(without their thousands of varieties of potato, including some which
happened to have been adapted to European-like climates, European
conquest of the world would not have been possible) justifies human
sacrifice.

Also, the Great Works of Western Culture in isolation show only one
side of how we got where we are today. The European-inflicted
decimation of African culture depicted in Achebe's _Things Fall Apart_
made possible the psychotic bourgeois relationships Thomas Hardy wrote
about, and is in any social scientific sense more closely related to
the growth of Western scientific thought (by producing the economic
conditions that left space and leisure time for scientific discovery
in Europe while obliterating that space in other cultures) than
whatever insights Hardy may have had on the human condition.

>Of course there's a whole lot more to art and literature than that. But
>what I just discussed is unique to that of the West. Therefore, even if
>there are absolutely no other reasons for us to accord higher value to the
>Western humanities (and I think there are many), the claim that science "does
>not imply any disproportionate value for Western art or literature" is simply
>mistaken.
>

One of us is mistaken, and I don't think it's me. :) Western art and
literature has its proper place in illuminating the evolution of
thought that led to Western science, but the art and literature of
other cultures cast equally valuable light. And this argument gives
no reason to value any culture's works over any other's on purely
aesthetic grounds, as defenders of the Canon so often do.
Ben

Christine Moritz

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Jul 19, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/19/96

Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:
: On 17 Jul 1996 19:41:56 GMT,

: Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
: >Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:

[snip]

: Also, the Great Works of Western Culture in isolation show only one

: side of how we got where we are today. The European-inflicted
: decimation of African culture depicted in Achebe's _Things Fall Apart_
: made possible the psychotic bourgeois relationships Thomas Hardy wrote
: about, and is in any social scientific sense more closely related to
: the growth of Western scientific thought (by producing the economic
: conditions that left space and leisure time for scientific discovery
: in Europe while obliterating that space in other cultures) than
: whatever insights Hardy may have had on the human condition.

People had "space and leisure time" for "scientific discovery" and
"psychotic bourgeois relationships" before the onset of mass
colonialization. If you want to argue that the "bourgeois[ie]" --
English in Hardy's case -- got "space and leisure time" by exploiting
whoever was under them, be it English peasants, Irish of all classes, or
Africans in colonialized nations, fine, but don't make it sound like the
colonization of Africa had some kind of unique, direct link to providing
leisure.

[snip]

Christine

Peter Keshavan

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Jul 22, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/22/96

Preface: Most of what I have to say in this article is neither directly
relevant to quiz bowl, nor allows one to infer anything about my views on
quiz bowl question distributions. I'll put the part of the article that
does do both of those things up front.

The rest, under normal circumstances, I would take to private email. I
would hesitate to do so, given that a handful of people have posted to this
and similar threads, and might therefore have some interest in the quiz bowl-
peripheral part of the article, but would still keep it in email. These
circumstances aren't normal. :) Given the enormous quantities of bandwidth
wasted daily by crap far less on-topic than anything in this post, I figure
the potential additional relative waste is outweighed by the potential gain,
if a few people actually give a damn about what I write.

But, if I'm really annoying anyone by taking up so much space on this topic,
I'm more than willing to take it off the group.

That said, here's the part of the post that's actually about quiz bowl. :)

I've always been a proponent of diversity in question topics and styles.
By "diversity," I mean something like the following:

acs2 [keshavan]% webster diversity
di.ver.si.ty \d*-'v*r-s*t-e-, di--\ n 1: the condition of being different
or having differences (snip)

Suppose I'm writing a sports question. Most sports questions ask for the
name of an individual, or a team, usually tied in with some kind of
achievement. I might try to write one about the rules or equipment for a
sport instead. Now, I could try to justify my choice on "ACFish" grounds:
The year of the lowering of the pitcher's mound is more important and
deeper knowledge of major league baseball than is the year of Bob Gibson's
1.12 ERA. The weight of the shot put reflects less superficial acquantance
with the topic of track and field than does that event's Olympic gold medal
winner in 1984. The official's signal for pass interference rather than the
name of the career leader in interceptions... you get the idea.

But I don't make that argument, because I'm not interested in testing depth
of important knowledge. I am interested in playing a fun game, which
happens to be based upon knowledge. And the first member of the above pairs
of question topics is, in my experience, less likely to be asked. I'd rather
ask the first type of question, in the hopes of doing my little part to
encourage originality among other writers, because I have more fun playing
quiz bowl when new types of stuff come up in the questions.

Because I like to play on diverse questions, I personally prefer a
distribution closer to the Stanford than to the ACF guidelines. If I've had
a particularly enjoyable round, I've probably had to remember stuff I read
about in third grade, in Newsweek last month, in a class I took a year ago,
and in a book the day before the tournament. Searching my trash and general
knowledge memory stores in addition to my academic memory, is more fun for me
than searching the last alone. Again, this is just my personal preference.

So I think it's fun to play on a wide variety of questions, and question
topics. This means that if there are subjects that don't get asked about
very frequently, but that people could answer questions about, it could be a
good thing to ask about them more often. I don't think that this should be
controversial at all. If my experience is to be trusted, non-western
literature is such a subject, and though Ben's memory may fail him, I have
in the past argued precisely this point, on these grounds, on this very
forum.

The relative values of different cultures' intellectual achievements, and
the alleged need to redress grievances, are irrelevant, as far as I'm
concerned, to the issue of what makes for a fun and challenging buzzer quiz
game. Other people have done a good job of expressing their views on these
other issues, whose bearing on question distributions I find to be profoundly
unimportant, and so I've remained silent on that matter.

This doesn't mean I have no opinions on those other issues, and it is they
that make up the remainder of this post. Thus, we now return you to your
regularly scheduled culture war.

Ben Weiss wrote:
>"Siberian-American?!?" I realize you're trying to be offensive,
>Peter,

More a tongue-in-cheek troll than an attempt to offend, but I see that I
succeeded at both what I was and wasn't trying to do. I refrain from
telling you that I realize you're trying to be myopic and Whiggish, so
please do me the same courtesy, and limit your charges to what I succeed
in doing. :)

>but the descendants of those Siberians have been on this
>continent for at least 20,000 years, compared to a maximum of 400 for
>Europeans, Africans and Asians (and far less for most). They also
>didn't displace anyone else. They deserve to be recognized as
>indigenous or Native American. (The most proper term, at least when
>dealing with Algonquian cultures such as predominate in my neck of the
>woods, is Anishinaabe, meaning "original people.")

There is evidence that they drove numerous indigenous large mammal species
into extinction, but I think we both agree that that doesn't count as
"displacement." At any rate, if you really want to get into arguments
basing rights to live here on temporal priority of one's ancestors, and on
lack of displacement, I imagine you would be a strong supporter of Pat
Buchanan's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border. We're all
immigrants, if you go back far enough, but this isn't a point it's worth
either of our time to argue.

>>BTW, if those herbal treatments and their practictioners' skills were
>>equivalent to those of modern medicine, why does the University of
>>Minnesota med school teach the curing of illnesses by the latter?

>Because much of the indigenous medical knowledge was wiped out in the
>genocide of Native American peoples.

Then how can you testify with such confidence to its efficacy?

If this knowledge, like that of airplanes and electric batteries allegedly
possessed by the Egyptians, was in fact victim of a conspiracy to suppress,
it seems to me that absent equally well-suppressed knowledge of time travel
on your part, you would be in no position to assert its existence, much
less to compare it to modern technology.

And if you are privy to information enabling you to make such comparisons,
why not share it with the rest of us? I know of some Live White Europeans
(Swedes, actually) who I'm sure would be delighted to recognize such a
major contribution to medical knowledge.

(snip)

>>I don't know about the claims you make
>>on behalf of Siberian-American medicine, but I do know that there was a
>>time when Chinese science, Arabic classical scholarship, Indian math, and
>>perhaps other fields studied by oppressed cultures, were not nearly so well
>>advanced in Europe. Some time between then and now, something happened.

>Yup--Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture
>back by centuries by destroying their economies.

Are the Japanese and Korean economies centuries behind where they'd be
today without the introduction of capitalism? Would India's culture be
much further advanced had _sati_ never been abolished by the British?
Does the East African economy reel from the destruction wrought by the
introduction of genetic tests to screen for sickle-cell anemia?

Important question: You say "set...back by centuries." Set back relative
to what? Towards what end were they progressing?

>>[Western] Scientific thought...is
>>objectively superior to other ways of going about trying to answer certain
>>questions. I'd rather be treated with modern medical technology by an MD
>>than with leeches by a barber, or with roots and bark by a witch doctor;
>>wouldn't you?

>I've personally had better results with homeopathy than anything else.

I won't argue with that. What I will say is that I know people who have
gotten results they're pretty happy with through Dionne Warwick's Psychic
Friends, and while I'd be wasting my breath to argue with them, there's
about as much rational basis for Dionne and friends as there is for
homeopathy. IOW, none whatsoever. But why talk rational bases? You can't
reason someone out of something he's never been reasoned into.

>Your dismissal of other types of medicine ("witch doctor," equation
>with leeching) ignores the fact that the same result can come through
>different avenues of discovery.

OK, but some results and some avenues of discovery are better than others.
Witch doctory and mass spectroscopy are not equivalent. Are you able and
willing to justify the application of the "avenues of discovery" used by
witch doctors (or for that matter, homeopaths) and explain why they are
any better than leeching?

> Yes, I concede that *certain*
>questions are best answered through the scientific method, and there
>are certain problems for which I would definitely choose Western
>medical technology above anything else (particularly at the point of
>crisis, e.g. open-heart surgery).

We agree on this much, so let's take this ball and run with it. Suppose
what we're talking about is a massively blocked coronary artery. You and
I are agreed then, that, all talk of "other ways of knowing" aside, the
person or people whom we'll ask to deal with the problem should be one
trained in particular branches of the intellectual tradition that goes back
through Pasteur, Harvey, Newton, and Bacon. There's a situation we agree
upon.

Now, let's think of some more situations, such that a culture that more
frequently obtains desirable outcomes in them will have a material advantage
over those that do so less frequently. Got a few in mind? Now, will the
Western intellectual tradition, or some other, be more likely to come out
ahead?

Here's a second, rather different example. The Chinese were using the
magnetic compass, ships with separate watertight compartments, and
numerous other navigational technologies several centuries before the
Europeans did. Why didn't they boldly sail around the Cape of Good Hope
and discover Europe?

It's a cultural thing. The Chinese navigators had much the same goal as
the Egyptian pyramid builders. Their aim was to sail to other nations,
obtain recognition of Chinese cultural superiority, and earn words of
praise for the emperor. To this end, they brought with them gifts for the
foreign rulers far exceeding the value of any tribute exacted. Obviously,
under those circumstances, the foreign nations weren't terribly upset about
the deal.

Well, the Middle Kingdom and its rulers certainly got their glory this way,
so I suppose it worked pretty well. But like pyramid building (and pyramid
schemes), there's a little economic problem with keeping up this kind of
enterprise for very long. Consider in contrast the European motivation for
building better sailing technology, and for risking one's life on a long,
hazardous journey. Even if you spot the underdog a few hundred years' head
start, whose culture would you expect to maintain a stronger tradition of
exploration and discovery- the Europeans, or the Chinese? A few centuries
later, which would you expect to be the dominant civilization?

Paint it with the broad brush of "imperialism" if you like. (Recent past
experience shows it's silly to waste our electrons and bile on the names we
give to things, so I'll use your chosen term here.) In your categorical
denunciations, bear in mind that without the "imperialist" mindset, we'd be
living much as our ancestors did in the middle ages. For what brought us
out of them was our exposure to other peoples, and through them, other ages.
Show me how the Renaissance could have transpired without "imperialism," and
I'll eat my hat. In light of that, convince me that that "imperialism" was
undesirable, and I'll eat the rest of my wardrobe.

(snip)

>>We managed to get to transplants, from leeching. Unless you insist on
>>denying the notion of objective superiority, you must grant that that's a
>>pretty big difference, and a pretty impressive accomplishment.

>No argument. We got there in part by appropriating everyone else's
>capital and, in some cases, knowledge.

When you read Blackstone's Commentaries for your law classes, are you
oppressing the English people by appropriating their knowledge, or are you
learning from someone who knows something you don't? Just curious.

Which was al-Khwarizmi doing when he used the Hindu number system? (Are we
oppressing him by using the word "algorithm?") I readily concede we would
never be doing transplants without the mathematical knowledge we acquired
second- and third-hand from the Arabs. Call it appropriating of knowledge,
if you wish. In the case of the third-hand knowledge, did the Arabs kindly
borrow it from the Indians and others, in a display of cultural cooperation
and exchange of ideas unheard of among the rapacious Europeans?

(snip)

>The achievements of Western culture in one field do not
>lend a golden glow of moral superiority to everything Western, any
>more than the superiority of the Incas at agricultural science
>(without their thousands of varieties of potato, including some which
>happened to have been adapted to European-like climates, European
>conquest of the world would not have been possible) justifies human
>sacrifice.

I'll take your word for it on the parenthesis. I'm not sure at whom the
rest of this paragraph is directed, because I don't claim otherwise.

>Also, the Great Works of Western Culture in isolation show only one
>side of how we got where we are today.

First, I have never argued that the GWWC are the be-all and end-all of all
there is to know. Anyone who would is an ignoramus. Hell, I wouldn't have
been able to make the arguments I make in this article if that's all I knew
anything about.

However- I don't have any idea how to begin responding to someone who says
that Nietzche and Augustine, Rousseau and Hobbes, Plato and Aristotle, Mill
and Burke, James and Russell, "in isolation show only one side of" anything.

(snip)

> Western art and
>literature has its proper place in illuminating the evolution of
>thought that led to Western science, but the art and literature of
>other cultures cast equally valuable light.

How did you determine that their lights were equally valuable? Or is
equality of value axiomatic, and therefore, any particular value
demonstrated to exist for one culture must necessarily be mirrored by a
light of equal value in another?

> And this argument gives
>no reason to value any culture's works over any other's on purely
>aesthetic grounds, as defenders of the Canon so often do.

Granted. Here's another, if that's what you'd like (slice out morally and
epistemologically if you want a pure aesthetic argument.): Individual
liberty and personal autonomy are aesthetically, morally, and
epistemologically more desirable than their contraries. A culture whose
works invented, and debated those notions is therefore aesthetically,
morally, and epistemologically preferable, in those respects, to one to
which those notions are alien.

I'll let you complete the argument; I trust we needn't debate the minor
premises- or did the Europeans conspire to keep secret the Indian custom
of open debate on public policy, the Chinese tradition of a free press, and
the cherished ancient Middle Eastern institution of freedom of conscience?

-Peter Keshavan

Ben Weiss

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Jul 22, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/22/96

On 19 Jul 1996 09:24:33 -0400,

Fair enough. Let's say that colonization in general granted the
bourgeoisie of Europe far more leisure time than they would have had
if they only had homegrown peasants to oppress. Achebe and Hardy are
microcosms of the two sides of the coin. (How's that for a mixed
metaphor?)
Ben

Matt Colvin

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Jul 23, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/23/96

In article <19014.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>,
Ben Weiss <weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
[huge snip]
>There's a difference between cultural contact and cultural
>obliteration. The discovery that Native American societies functioned
>without hereditary authority or social caste sent intellectual
>shockwaves through Europe and spurred the development of democratic
>theory, which previously had had no practical bases from which to
>work.

I will call this what it is: a multiculturalist lie. The ancient Greeks
not only had democratic theory, they discussed it constantly in gymnasia
and the streets of Athens. Much of Greek literature is concerned with
the implications of democracy, even such things as the exclusion of
women from participation in it. These themes are present in Hesiod,
Herodotus, Attic tragedians, Aristophanes, and of course philosophers.
This is of course because they had a practical basis from which to work
-- they had democracy, and they didn't borrow it from Native Americans.

[snip]
>tended to emphasize the theoretical, the Native American tradition the
>practical. Native Americans developed working democratic societies;
>Europeans studied them, identified their elements and picked apart
>their philosophical bases. Europeans in America eventually copied
>several Native American governmental innovations (Thomas Jefferson and
>Benjamin Franklin were both students of Native American government,
>and our federal structure was largely lifted from the League of the
>Iroquois); a number of European societies have arguably improved on
>the American model.

This may well be, but below you make much more outrageous claims that I
know to be out of line with historical fact. I can't speak about the
above paragraph.

[snip]
>I would say that no culture, whether advantaged or disadvantaged by
>the social trends of the past 500 years, is intrinsically more
>valuable than any other in its insights. To the extent that the art
>and literature of each culture reflects its differing experiences in
>dealing with those social trends, each differs in value only to the
>extent that it makes those experiences comprehensible to the modern
>reader or viewer. (Remember, we are talking about art and literature
>as reflections of social development.) If this is the purpose for
>which you are studying art or literature, then those works which focus
>on experiences furthest from those of the reader--whether _The Grapes
>of Wrath_ or _Things Fall Apart_--will on average tend to have more
>value than those that concentrate on more familiar social strata,
>since the level of inspiration the latter will have to display in
>order to produce new insights will have to be higher.

This is THE problem with multiculturalism as it is provided in today's
universities. It unseats real values and replaces them with diversity as
a goal in itself. This paragraph amounts to saying that works of
literature are more or less valuable in proportion to how diverse they
are, or how far removed from the experience of the reader. But this
really is no standard at all.

When I write questions on literature, I try to write them on artistically
good or philosophically deep works or writers. If I don't know for
certain how good a book is, I judge it by its reputation or the appraisal
of a source like Benet's. Not for a minute do I assign "more value" to
works that concentrate on experiences furthest from my own experience.

I note that, just to ensure the circularity of your argument, you toss in
a last sentence saying that the reason alien (from the reader) works are
of higher value is that they have to achieve a greater level of
inspiration. Which will it be, Ben? Are they of value because they are
inspired, a state of affairs that was brought about by their being
alien? Or are they of value because they are foreign, a condition which
somehow guarantees that they will be more inspired?

Personally, I think this notion, whichever version you are claiming here,
is just silly. Did Shakespeare achieve greatness by writing plays alien
to his audience? Hell no.

>Europeans only developed real notions of individual liberty after
>seeing how much of it Native Americans, in particular, enjoyed. The

Bullshit! Read some Plato. Or better yet, some fragments of Solon.

>Western canon is valuable for the extent and depth of its debate on
>the subject, but it did not "invent" the concept in any way.

This is simply not true. Maybe Native Americans had democracy, but
the Europeans sure didn't wait until Columbus to invent it.

Matt

Ben Weiss

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Jul 23, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/23/96

On 22 Jul 1996 21:40:26 GMT,
Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:

>Preface: Most of what I have to say in this article is neither directly
>relevant to quiz bowl, nor allows one to infer anything about my views on
>quiz bowl question distributions. I'll put the part of the article that
>does do both of those things up front.
>
>The rest, under normal circumstances, I would take to private email. I
>would hesitate to do so, given that a handful of people have posted to this
>and similar threads, and might therefore have some interest in the quiz bowl-
>peripheral part of the article, but would still keep it in email. These
>circumstances aren't normal. :) Given the enormous quantities of bandwidth
>wasted daily by crap far less on-topic than anything in this post, I figure
>the potential additional relative waste is outweighed by the potential gain,
>if a few people actually give a damn about what I write.

I agree--this is why I've stayed on the newsgroup with this debate as
well. And, like Peter, I'll take it to e-mail if somebody finds it
too annoying.

[snip]

>
>Because I like to play on diverse questions, I personally prefer a
>distribution closer to the Stanford than to the ACF guidelines. If I've had
>a particularly enjoyable round, I've probably had to remember stuff I read
>about in third grade, in Newsweek last month, in a class I took a year ago,
>and in a book the day before the tournament. Searching my trash and general
>knowledge memory stores in addition to my academic memory, is more fun for me
>than searching the last alone. Again, this is just my personal preference.

Very much agreed.

>
>So I think it's fun to play on a wide variety of questions, and question
>topics. This means that if there are subjects that don't get asked about
>very frequently, but that people could answer questions about, it could be a
>good thing to ask about them more often. I don't think that this should be
>controversial at all. If my experience is to be trusted, non-western
>literature is such a subject, and though Ben's memory may fail him, I have
>in the past argued precisely this point, on these grounds, on this very
>forum.

I don't remember it, but I'll take your word for it. :)
>
>We now return you to your

>regularly scheduled culture war.
>
>Ben Weiss wrote:

[Initial "Siberian-American" volleys snipped]

>
>There is evidence that they drove numerous indigenous large mammal species
>into extinction, but I think we both agree that that doesn't count as
>"displacement." At any rate, if you really want to get into arguments
>basing rights to live here on temporal priority of one's ancestors, and on
>lack of displacement, I imagine you would be a strong supporter of Pat
>Buchanan's plan to build a wall along the Mexican border. We're all
>immigrants, if you go back far enough, but this isn't a point it's worth
>either of our time to argue.
>

I find it worth enough argument to note that there's a qualitative
difference between 20,000 years and less than 400 years, and between
settling a continent uninhabited by humans and displacing an
indigenous population. "We're all immigrants" in this context is a
cop-out used by those who'd rather ignore the sordid history of
European-Native American relations, although it is useful as a retort
to the Pat Buchanans among us.

>
>>>BTW, if those herbal treatments and their practictioners' skills were
>>>equivalent to those of modern medicine, why does the University of
>>>Minnesota med school teach the curing of illnesses by the latter?
>
>>Because much of the indigenous medical knowledge was wiped out in the
>>genocide of Native American peoples.
>
>Then how can you testify with such confidence to its efficacy?
>

[expanded point snipped for brevity]

>
>And if you are privy to information enabling you to make such comparisons,
>why not share it with the rest of us? I know of some Live White Europeans
>(Swedes, actually) who I'm sure would be delighted to recognize such a
>major contribution to medical knowledge.
>

Basically, many indigenous techniques, in medicine and other areas,
are now being rediscovered because those who remember them no longer
get killed or lose their children for publicly revealing their
knowledge. While some members of the medical establishment are open
to these ideas, others are resistant. I have no doubt that some of
these techniques will eventually become mainstream absent a return to
physical and cultural genocide, and as a matter of historical
accuracy, I find it useful to remember who came up with them first.
And logic tells us that when over 90% of a population has been lost,
it's unlikely that anywhere near 100% of its knowledge has survived;
therefore, the odds are that the Native Americans had many
useful techniques beyond those being rediscovered today.

>>>I don't know about the claims you make
>>>on behalf of Siberian-American medicine, but I do know that there was a
>>>time when Chinese science, Arabic classical scholarship, Indian math, and
>>>perhaps other fields studied by oppressed cultures, were not nearly so well
>>>advanced in Europe. Some time between then and now, something happened.
>
>>Yup--Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture
>>back by centuries by destroying their economies.
>
>Are the Japanese and Korean economies centuries behind where they'd be
>today without the introduction of capitalism? Would India's culture be
>much further advanced had _sati_ never been abolished by the British?
>Does the East African economy reel from the destruction wrought by the
>introduction of genetic tests to screen for sickle-cell anemia?
>
>Important question: You say "set...back by centuries." Set back relative
>to what? Towards what end were they progressing?

Well, the African economy does "reel" from the practices of Europeans
who farmed it without regard to its ecology, built only the
infrastructure necessary to ship all the goodies back to Europe, and
replaced indigenous social systems with giant coffee, cocoa and rubber
plantations while displacing millions of subsistence farmers who had
once been doing just fine (and who largely can't afford the tests
for sickle-cell anemia). The same can be said of the Indian
subcontinent. Japan, you will note, was never colonized, and Korea
was only colonized by Japan itself. Modern Native Americans in
rural Bolivia and Peru have a significantly lower standard of living
than their ancestors in the Inca Empire, and the pre-contact Ojibwe
and Dakota ate a lot better than the Native Americans I know living in
the Minneapolis projects.

>
>>>[Western] Scientific thought...is
>>>objectively superior to other ways of going about trying to answer certain
>>>questions. I'd rather be treated with modern medical technology by an MD
>>>than with leeches by a barber, or with roots and bark by a witch doctor;
>>>wouldn't you?
>
>>I've personally had better results with homeopathy than anything else.
>

>I know people who have
>gotten results they're pretty happy with through Dionne Warwick's Psychic
>Friends, and while I'd be wasting my breath to argue with them, there's
>about as much rational basis for Dionne and friends as there is for
>homeopathy. IOW, none whatsoever. But why talk rational bases? You can't
>reason someone out of something he's never been reasoned into.
>

I know that homeopathy works for me. I also know that this computer
works. I don't personally know exactly how either works because
neither medicine nor electronic engineering is my field of expertise.
I was "reasoned into" the use of homeopathy when I (skeptically) tried
it the first time and saw its effects. I accept that certain
phenomena exist that science has not *yet* figured out how to explain.

>
>>Your dismissal of other types of medicine ("witch doctor," equation
>>with leeching) ignores the fact that the same result can come through
>>different avenues of discovery.
>
>OK, but some results and some avenues of discovery are better than others.
>Witch doctory and mass spectroscopy are not equivalent. Are you able and
>willing to justify the application of the "avenues of discovery" used by
>witch doctors (or for that matter, homeopaths) and explain why they are
>any better than leeching?
>

Do you understand how mass spectroscopy works? Reputable
nontraditional medicine--and I concede that not every practice that
calls itself medicine is reputable--typically is the result of
thousands of years of trial and error. If we know that a certain herb
or homeopathic extract thereof makes, in 90% of cases, fevers go down
or broken bones heal faster, does somebody really need to have worked
out the exact chemical formula to make it trustworthy?

>
>> Yes, I concede that *certain*
>>questions are best answered through the scientific method, and there
>>are certain problems for which I would definitely choose Western
>>medical technology above anything else (particularly at the point of
>>crisis, e.g. open-heart surgery).
>
>We agree on this much, so let's take this ball and run with it. Suppose
>what we're talking about is a massively blocked coronary artery. You and
>I are agreed then, that, all talk of "other ways of knowing" aside, the
>person or people whom we'll ask to deal with the problem should be one
>trained in particular branches of the intellectual tradition that goes back
>through Pasteur, Harvey, Newton, and Bacon. There's a situation we agree
>upon.

Western science has, to my satisfaction, proven its relative efficacy
in getting people out of extreme medical crises, so I'll go with it.

>
>Here's a second, rather different example. The Chinese were using the
>magnetic compass, ships with separate watertight compartments, and
>numerous other navigational technologies several centuries before the
>Europeans did. Why didn't they boldly sail around the Cape of Good Hope
>and discover Europe?
>
>It's a cultural thing. The Chinese navigators had much the same goal as
>the Egyptian pyramid builders. Their aim was to sail to other nations,
>obtain recognition of Chinese cultural superiority, and earn words of
>praise for the emperor. To this end, they brought with them gifts for the
>foreign rulers far exceeding the value of any tribute exacted. Obviously,
>under those circumstances, the foreign nations weren't terribly upset about
>the deal.
>

>...Consider in contrast the European motivation for

>building better sailing technology, and for risking one's life on a long,
>hazardous journey. Even if you spot the underdog a few hundred years' head
>start, whose culture would you expect to maintain a stronger tradition of
>exploration and discovery- the Europeans, or the Chinese? A few centuries
>later, which would you expect to be the dominant civilization? Paint it with
>the broad brush of "imperialism" if you like.

In your example, the motives of the Chinese were purely cultural.
What if, while the Europeans insisted on fomenting rebellions,
stealing land, forcibly converting indigenous populations to
Christianity and enslaving and obliterating entire cultures, the
Chinese fulfilled their economic motivations through trade with other
cultures for mutual benefit, with each culture bringing the advances
of the other back to their homeland? I would guess that at least some
cultural advances spread across Eurasia this way, and that this sort
of system might ultimately have produced as much success as
imperialism, with less waste of lives, knowledge and resources.

>In your categorical
>denunciations, bear in mind that without the "imperialist" mindset, we'd be
>living much as our ancestors did in the middle ages. For what brought us
>out of them was our exposure to other peoples, and through them, other ages.
>Show me how the Renaissance could have transpired without "imperialism," and
>I'll eat my hat. In light of that, convince me that that "imperialism" was
>undesirable, and I'll eat the rest of my wardrobe.

There's a difference between cultural contact and cultural

obliteration. The discovery that Native American societies functioned
without hereditary authority or social caste sent intellectual
shockwaves through Europe and spurred the development of democratic
theory, which previously had had no practical bases from which to

work. This could have been accomplished without the stealing of
Native American land, assorted mass murders, and attempted
obliteration of the very culture that opened the eyes of
Europe--cultural contact can only take place with cultures that are
still functioning.

>
>>>We managed to get to transplants, from leeching. Unless you insist on
>>>denying the notion of objective superiority, you must grant that that's a
>>>pretty big difference, and a pretty impressive accomplishment.
>
>>No argument. We got there in part by appropriating everyone else's
>>capital and, in some cases, knowledge.
>
>When you read Blackstone's Commentaries for your law classes, are you
>oppressing the English people by appropriating their knowledge, or are you
>learning from someone who knows something you don't? Just curious.

The latter, of course. It would be the former if I took what I liked
from it, then got an army together, conquered England, forbade the
English from using the parts I didn't like, and rewrote the books to
say that I invented the whole thing. European use of Arab and Indian
advancements in mathematics didn't follow this pattern; European
appropriation of Native American agricultural science, for example,
did.

>In the case of the third-hand knowledge, did the Arabs kindly
>borrow it from the Indians and others, in a display of cultural cooperation
>and exchange of ideas unheard of among the rapacious Europeans?

I somehow doubt that the scholars who actually brought the Indian
techniques to the Muslim caliphates were the same soldiers who
beheaded those who refused to convert. The Muslim conquest might have
given these scholars more opportunity for travel, but I wouldn't go so
far as to call warfare a prerequisite for all cultural advancement.

>
>(snip)
>
>>The achievements of Western culture in one field do not
>>lend a golden glow of moral superiority to everything Western, any
>>more than the superiority of the Incas at agricultural science
>>(without their thousands of varieties of potato, including some which
>>happened to have been adapted to European-like climates, European
>>conquest of the world would not have been possible) justifies human
>>sacrifice.
>
>I'll take your word for it on the parenthesis. I'm not sure at whom the
>rest of this paragraph is directed, because I don't claim otherwise.
>

You claimed that the study of Western art and literature should
properly receive more attention than the art and literature of other
cultures because they came out of a common tradition with Western
science. To which my answer is: Different cultures emphasize
different traditions. The French have devoted a lot of energy to
visual arts; African-Americans have devoted a lot of energy to music.
Hence, the present world culture draws much more on French visual art
and African-American music than the reverse. The superiority of
African-Americans over the French in creating new musical forms should
not be held to make French visual art less worthy of study.

In terms of science, natural and social, the European tradition has

tended to emphasize the theoretical, the Native American tradition the
practical. Native Americans developed working democratic societies;
Europeans studied them, identified their elements and picked apart
their philosophical bases. Europeans in America eventually copied
several Native American governmental innovations (Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin were both students of Native American government,
and our federal structure was largely lifted from the League of the
Iroquois); a number of European societies have arguably improved on
the American model.

You can find similar patterns in biological science. Native Americans
developed thousands of varieties of corn and potatoes that could grow
anywhere from Patagonia to Canada. Europeans took a few varieties of
potato home and, now blessed with a staple food that would grow more
reliably in the damp climates of northern Europe than wheat, began
study of the mechanics of genetics and evolution.

I would describe these two methods as complementary rather than
characterizing one as superior to the other, and with my limited
knowledge of philosophy, I personally tend to identify most with those
philosophies that combine elements of both, such as pragmatism. I
don't find the Western scientific emphasis on theorizing and unlocking
mechanics to justify disproportionate veneration of European classical
music over, say, African-American music, any more than Native American
practical scientific advances justify entire university departments
dedicated to the study of Native American musical forms, even though
one can find a common cultural base for both as coherent as the
overall Western intellectual tradition.

>
>>Also, the Great Works of Western Culture in isolation show only one
>>side of how we got where we are today.
>

>I don't have any idea how to begin responding to someone who says
>that Nietzche and Augustine, Rousseau and Hobbes, Plato and Aristotle, Mill

>and Burke, James and Russell, "in isolation show only one side of" anything.

We had been talking about art and literature as windows on the
development of the intellectual tradition that made science possible,
and I was making the point that the art and literature of non-Western
cultures can shed valuable light on other sides of that story. Pure
theory or philosophy is studied for different reasons, although again,
one's understanding of the possibilities of philosophy is certainly
broadened by reading works from outside the Western tradition.

>
>(snip)
>
>> Western art and
>>literature has its proper place in illuminating the evolution of
>>thought that led to Western science, but the art and literature of
>>other cultures cast equally valuable light.
>
>How did you determine that their lights were equally valuable? Or is
>equality of value axiomatic, and therefore, any particular value
>demonstrated to exist for one culture must necessarily be mirrored by a
>light of equal value in another?

I would say that no culture, whether advantaged or disadvantaged by

the social trends of the past 500 years, is intrinsically more
valuable than any other in its insights. To the extent that the art
and literature of each culture reflects its differing experiences in
dealing with those social trends, each differs in value only to the
extent that it makes those experiences comprehensible to the modern
reader or viewer. (Remember, we are talking about art and literature
as reflections of social development.) If this is the purpose for
which you are studying art or literature, then those works which focus
on experiences furthest from those of the reader--whether _The Grapes
of Wrath_ or _Things Fall Apart_--will on average tend to have more
value than those that concentrate on more familiar social strata,
since the level of inspiration the latter will have to display in
order to produce new insights will have to be higher.

[snip]

>Individual
>liberty and personal autonomy are aesthetically, morally, and
>epistemologically more desirable than their contraries. A culture whose
>works invented, and debated those notions is therefore aesthetically,
>morally, and epistemologically preferable, in those respects, to one to
>which those notions are alien.

Europeans only developed real notions of individual liberty after

seeing how much of it Native Americans, in particular, enjoyed. The

Western canon is valuable for the extent and depth of its debate on
the subject, but it did not "invent" the concept in any way.
>

>I'll let you complete the argument; I trust we needn't debate the minor
>premises- or did the Europeans conspire to keep secret the Indian custom
>of open debate on public policy, the Chinese tradition of a free press, and
>the cherished ancient Middle Eastern institution of freedom of conscience?
>

Europeans did, however, eventually suppress discussion of the Native
American democratic tradition to which I refer above, and I'm sure
there are other examples in parts of the world with which I'm less
familiar. And some concepts that we (or at least I) now regard as
fundamental to liberty, such as caste-free egalitarianism, were
practiced much more widely among other cultures (such as the Arabs, as
long as you were male) than in the West. And yes, there has been
explicit suppression throughout Western history of concepts that
contradicted whatever was orthodox at the time, be it Christian dogma,
the infallibility of the American founding fathers, or
anti-Communism. Given the legacy of this repression, I'm going to
continue assuming that all cultures have valuable insights to offer
until I learn enough to make a truly objective ranking, which will
likely be never.
Ben

Ben Weiss

unread,

Jul 24, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/24/96

On 23 Jul 1996 09:57:41 -0400,

Matt Colvin <pto...@wam.umd.edu > wrote:
>In article <19014.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>,
>Ben Weiss <weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:

>[huge snip]

>>There's a difference between cultural contact and cultural
>>obliteration. The discovery that Native American societies functioned
>>without hereditary authority or social caste sent intellectual
>>shockwaves through Europe and spurred the development of democratic
>>theory, which previously had had no practical bases from which to
>>work.
>

>I will call this what it is: a multiculturalist lie. The ancient Greeks
>not only had democratic theory, they discussed it constantly in gymnasia
>and the streets of Athens. Much of Greek literature is concerned with
>the implications of democracy, even such things as the exclusion of
>women from participation in it. These themes are present in Hesiod,
>Herodotus, Attic tragedians, Aristophanes, and of course philosophers.
>This is of course because they had a practical basis from which to work
>-- they had democracy, and they didn't borrow it from Native Americans.

One slip of my tongue: I should have said the experience of Native
Americans spurred the development of *modern* democratic theory. I
won't argue ancient Greece with Matt because he knows it better than I
do, but I will ask: How much of Greece had democracy, what percentage
of the population actually got to participate in the democratic
processes, and how long did it last? I know for a fact that ancient
Greece had slavery on a huge scale; Native Americans did not. (I've
read that one philosophical split between the American North and South
in the 18th century had to do with the source for their idea of
democracy; the South preferred the Greek model because it allowed for
slavery, while Northern thinkers preferred a Native American model.)
Anyhow, after ancient Greece, Europe had no working example of
democracy until it came upon the Native Americans, who inspired the
idea of the "noble savage" and seminal democratic thinkers such as
Thomas Paine.
>
>[snip]

>>I would say that no culture, whether advantaged or disadvantaged by
>>the social trends of the past 500 years, is intrinsically more
>>valuable than any other in its insights. To the extent that the art
>>and literature of each culture reflects its differing experiences in
>>dealing with those social trends, each differs in value only to the
>>extent that it makes those experiences comprehensible to the modern
>>reader or viewer. (Remember, we are talking about art and literature
>>as reflections of social development.) If this is the purpose for
>>which you are studying art or literature, then those works which focus
>>on experiences furthest from those of the reader--whether _The Grapes
>>of Wrath_ or _Things Fall Apart_--will on average tend to have more
>>value than those that concentrate on more familiar social strata,
>>since the level of inspiration the latter will have to display in
>>order to produce new insights will have to be higher.
>

>This is THE problem with multiculturalism as it is provided in today's
>universities. It unseats real values and replaces them with diversity as
>a goal in itself. This paragraph amounts to saying that works of
>literature are more or less valuable in proportion to how diverse they
>are, or how far removed from the experience of the reader. But this
>really is no standard at all.

It is a workable standard IF your purpose in studying art and
literature is to gain the insights they offer into the historical
periods they depict. The odds are that the more the experience
depicted differs from the reader, if it is well portrayed, the more
insight the reader will gain. If you have another purpose, you will
use different standards.

>
>When I write questions on literature, I try to write them on artistically
>good or philosophically deep works or writers. If I don't know for
>certain how good a book is, I judge it by its reputation or the appraisal
>of a source like Benet's. Not for a minute do I assign "more value" to
>works that concentrate on experiences furthest from my own experience.

I'm not really talking about question-writing here, but responding to
Peter Keshavan's argument that Western art and literature is worth
more study than that of other cultures because it sheds light on the
development of the philosophy that in turn developed the technology
that dominates life today. I argue that the literature of groups
oppressed by the dominant culture sheds just as much light FOR THIS
PURPOSE. For question-writing purposes, I write like everyone else--I
go from what I know, based on what I think is or should be answerable
(admittedly from my perspective). Unlike Matt, I will at times
deliberately write a question on a non-dominant culture if the packet
feels light on them--it's just one of the things I look for when I'm
in the position of writing or editing a packet.

>
>I note that, just to ensure the circularity of your argument, you toss in
>a last sentence saying that the reason alien (from the reader) works are
>of higher value is that they have to achieve a greater level of
>inspiration. Which will it be, Ben? Are they of value because they are
>inspired, a state of affairs that was brought about by their being
>alien? Or are they of value because they are foreign, a condition which
>somehow guarantees that they will be more inspired?
>
>Personally, I think this notion, whichever version you are claiming here,
>is just silly. Did Shakespeare achieve greatness by writing plays alien
>to his audience? Hell no.

Nope, you got the argument wrong. If you're reading a work to gain
insight into how the world got where it is, then a work depicting a
culture further from your own doesn't need to be as inspired to teach
you the same amount. If you're already familiar with the types of
people and events depicted, the author needs to be particularly good
for you to get anything new out of the work. Shakespeare is great
because his use of words gets you to see familiar situations in new
ways--a wonderful talent, but arguably not one that sheds much light
on how the world got how it is, in Peter's formulation as I understand
it. In comparison, Achebe or Steinbeck can teach you a lot by simply
clearly depicting what effects colonization or Depression can have on
a family or society.

>
>>Europeans only developed real notions of individual liberty after
>>seeing how much of it Native Americans, in particular, enjoyed. The
>

>Bullshit! Read some Plato. [Solon snipped--who's he?]

What, the part about philosopher-kings? :)

>
>>Western canon is valuable for the extent and depth of its debate on
>>the subject, but it did not "invent" the concept in any way.
>

>This is simply not true. Maybe Native Americans had democracy, but
>the Europeans sure didn't wait until Columbus to invent it.
>

But they weren't able to put it into practice for any length of time
until after Columbus, and there's a reason for that. Before, they had
only fragmentary records of the slave society of ancient Greece.
After, they had working models to copy.
Ben

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Jul 24, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/24/96

Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:

(snip)

: processes, and how long did it last? I know for a fact that ancient

: Greece had slavery on a huge scale; Native Americans did not.

Since this outrageousness didn't occur in response to one of my own posts,
I'll just address it here. To paraphrase Matt C, this is a multiculturalist
bullshit lie.

Among some tribes, 10-15 of the population was enslaved. In potlatch
ceremonies, it wasn't just bronze plaques that were destroyed as symbols
of conspicuous waste. If you want me to cite sources, email me and I'll
be happy to oblige.

(I've
: read that one philosophical split between the American North and South
: in the 18th century had to do with the source for their idea of
: democracy; the South preferred the Greek model because it allowed for
: slavery, while Northern thinkers preferred a Native American model.)

I'll show why this is more of the same in my next post.

: I'm not really talking about question-writing here, but responding to

: Peter Keshavan's argument that Western art and literature is worth
: more study than that of other cultures because it sheds light on the
: development of the philosophy that in turn developed the technology
: that dominates life today.

And in so doing, you distort my argument. Let's see how this whole business
started: I made a comment that Joe Wright's observation about the
historical uniqueness of science to the west supports the notion of Western
cultural superiority. You denied this, and further claimed that this gave
no reason to add weight to the value of the Western humanities.

I then said, OK, here's one such reason, and explicitly added the disclaimer
that there were many, many more reasons to value the West's humanistic
accomplishments more highly, and have since offered some of them. Now if
you want to pretend that my observation about the development of science is
the whole basis for my nonrelativism, I can only assume that you have been
reading very selectively.

(snip)

: >Bullshit! Read some Plato. [Solon snipped--who's he?]

"Solon... who's he?" If I were Matt, I'd put this in my .sig file.
I'll just observe that it says a hell of a lot.

(snip)

-Peter Keshavan

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Jul 24, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/24/96

Most of this post is relatively trifling. The lies about the Iroquois are,
IMO, relatively important. So if you'd start reading this, get bored
halfway through, and hit n, don't bother. Just go to the end and read that.

Ben Weiss wrote:

(snip)

:>We're all immigrants, if you go back far enough, but this isn't a point

:>it's worth either of our time to argue.

:I find it worth enough argument to note that there's a qualitative
:difference between 20,000 years and less than 400 years, and between
:settling a continent uninhabited by humans and displacing an
:indigenous population. "We're all immigrants" in this context is a
:cop-out used by those who'd rather ignore the sordid history of
:European-Native American relations, although it is useful as a retort
:to the Pat Buchanans among us.

They're not the only ones against whom it's useful as a retort. ;)

The ratio of 20,000:400 is the same as that of 50:1. So, if your family
have been here for two generations, and mine arrived last Thursday, why
can't you invoke precisely the same qualitative argument against my
"displacement" of you from, say, the work force, human services, or tax
dollars? Or has non-western thought determined that the proper mathematical
operation to use in determining squatter's rights is subtraction, and not
division?

We're all immigrants.

And while we're at it, can you name an extant non-western society with a
tradition of assimilating immigrants, or of tolerating a fraction of the
diversity that we are wont to celebrate?

:>>>BTW, if those herbal treatments and their practictioners' skills were

:>>>equivalent to those of modern medicine, why does the University of
:>>>Minnesota med school teach the curing of illnesses by the latter?
>
:>>Because much of the indigenous medical knowledge was wiped out in the
:>>genocide of Native American peoples.
>
:>Then how can you testify with such confidence to its efficacy?
>
:[expanded point snipped for brevity]

:>And if you are privy to information enabling you to make such comparisons,
:>why not share it with the rest of us? I know of some Live White Europeans
:>(Swedes, actually) who I'm sure would be delighted to recognize such a
:>major contribution to medical knowledge.
>
:Basically, many indigenous techniques, in medicine and other areas,
:are now being rediscovered because those who remember them no longer
:get killed or lose their children for publicly revealing their
:knowledge.

When were doctors systematically dispatching Arnold Schwarzenegger to
eliminate the last remaining mother and child known to possess the secret
cure for prostate cancer?

You snipped my expanded point, but you did not refute, or even attempt to
challenge it. I'll ask again: If this marvellous knowledge has been so
successfully eradicated, how on earth are you in any position to make the
claim that it is the equivalent of that used in modern medicine?

(snip)

:And logic tells us that when over 90% of a population has been lost,

:it's unlikely that anywhere near 100% of its knowledge has survived;
:therefore, the odds are that the Native Americans had many
:useful techniques beyond those being rediscovered today.

I haven't questioned you on the techniques you claim are being rediscovered
today, but would you please satisfy my curiosity and provide a few examples?

FWIW, there aren't any ancient Greeks left alive today, so we can probably
agree that over 90% of their population has been lost. A decent amount
of their knowledge has survived, because they had a system of written
language- ditto the Babylonians, Hebrews, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and
numerous others. Shall we argue whether the institution of committing
learning to writing is objectively superior to the lack thereof?

(snip)

:>>Yup--Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture

:>>back by centuries by destroying their economies.
>
:>Are the Japanese and Korean economies centuries behind where they'd be
:>today without the introduction of capitalism? Would India's culture be
:>much further advanced had _sati_ never been abolished by the British?
:>Does the East African economy reel from the destruction wrought by the
:>introduction of genetic tests to screen for sickle-cell anemia?
>
:>Important question: You say "set...back by centuries." Set back relative
:>to what? Towards what end were they progressing?

:Well, the African economy does "reel" from the practices of Europeans
:who farmed it without regard to its ecology, built only the
:infrastructure necessary to ship all the goodies back to Europe, and
:replaced indigenous social systems with giant coffee, cocoa and rubber
:plantations

Were these goodies produced by or for anyone prior to that time?
What do you, personally, drink in the morning, and wear on your soles?
You know what they say about actions and words.

:while displacing millions of subsistence farmers who had

:once been doing just fine (and who largely can't afford the tests
:for sickle-cell anemia). The same can be said of the Indian
:subcontinent.

And those living under the kind and benevolent emperor Aurangzeb, prior
to the colonial period, were much better off than those Indians now so
oppressed by imperialism that they learn Western thought in British-founded
universities, and some immigrate (see first section of this post) to this
country, and earn socioeconomic success disproportionate to their presence
in the population?

Again, was the abolition of _sati_ a set-back of centuries?

:Japan, you will note, was never colonized, and Korea

:was only colonized by Japan itself.

(That's funny, I thought only Europeans were capable of such atrocity.)
Yes, I'm aware of these facts, but I'm not the one who claimed that

"Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture back by
centuries by destroying their economies."

(point I'm in no position to comment on snipped)

(snip)

:I know that homeopathy works for me. I also know that this computer

:works. I don't personally know exactly how either works because
:neither medicine nor electronic engineering is my field of expertise.

The difference is that those whose field of expertise is electronics
a) agree that computers work, and b) agree upon the theoretical basis for
the fact that they work.

Medical scientists a) agree that homeopathy does not work, and b) agree that
there is no possible mechanism by which a solution that no longer contains
a single molecule of a compound could retain that compound's chemical
properties, any more than there's a possibility of discovering an element
between helium and lithium.

:I was "reasoned into" the use of homeopathy when I (skeptically) tried

:it the first time and saw its effects.

Anecdotal evidence isn't worth the paper it's printed on. "Why, my
granddaddy smoked four packs a day since he was 11, and never ate anything
but raw beef, and he lived to 94!!!" There's a reason real medical
treatments are tested in controlled experiments, using statistically
significant sample sizes, and with placebo groups.

:I accept that certain

:phenomena exist that science has not *yet* figured out how to explain.

As do I. But homeopathy isn't one of them, because there's nothing to
explain.

:>>Your dismissal of other types of medicine ("witch doctor," equation
:>>with leeching) ignores the fact that the same result can come through
:>>different avenues of discovery.
>
:>OK, but some results and some avenues of discovery are better than others.
:>Witch doctory and mass spectroscopy are not equivalent. Are you able and
:>willing to justify the application of the "avenues of discovery" used by
:>witch doctors (or for that matter, homeopaths) and explain why they are
:>any better than leeching?
>
:Do you understand how mass spectroscopy works?

Off the top of my head, can I explain it publically in such a way that I'd
be willing to attach my name to it and say "this is how mass spectroscopy
works"? No. I have concern for the truth of what I claim to be true, you
see. Could I have done so a few years age? Yes. Could I do so in about
half an hour if I dug out a chemistry book and reread the relevant sections?
You bet.

Tell you what. As you'll see below, I did some homework for this post.
I'm willing to do more in the next couple of days. If you agree, I'll
prepare a short (just a few paragraphs) explanation of how mass spectroscopy
works, and you do the same for witch doctoring, homeopathy, or leeching.
Then, we'll see whose explication better stands up to the other's critical
scrutiny. Deal?

Reputable
:nontraditional medicine--and I concede that not every practice that
:calls itself medicine is reputable--typically is the result of
:thousands of years of trial and error. If we know that a certain herb
:or homeopathic extract thereof makes, in 90% of cases, fevers go down
:or broken bones heal faster, does somebody really need to have worked
:out the exact chemical formula to make it trustworthy?

No, *if* we do know that. And, as the old Yiddish saying goes, if my
grandmother had balls, she'd be my grandfather. IOW, she doesn't, so she's
not. Homeopathic extracts to my knowledge do absolutely nothing, and before
I'm going to go medicate myself with an herb rather than a Tylenol, I'd
like to know what's in that herb. But that's irrelevant, since all you're
doing above is engaging in hypotheticals. Got any actual evidence?

(snip)

:In your example, the motives of the Chinese were purely cultural.

:What if, while the Europeans insisted on fomenting rebellions,
:stealing land, forcibly converting indigenous populations to
:Christianity and enslaving and obliterating entire cultures, the
:Chinese fulfilled their economic motivations through trade with other
:cultures for mutual benefit, with each culture bringing the advances
:of the other back to their homeland? I would guess that at least some
:cultural advances spread across Eurasia this way, and that this sort
:of system might ultimately have produced as much success as
:imperialism, with less waste of lives, knowledge and resources.

OK, what if. What if George Foreman had won the '92 presidential election,
and ushered in a new era of peace and justice worldwide?

In my now-snipped narrative, I hoped to make clear that Chinese navigation
wasn't about economic motivations, and mutual benefit, and that it collapsed
of its own weight, both because of and causing its failure to lead to any
truly significant cultural advances.

(snip)

:The discovery that Native American societies functioned

:without hereditary authority or social caste sent intellectual
:shockwaves through Europe and spurred the development of democratic
:theory, which previously had had no practical bases from which to
:work.

Doug O'Neal

unread,

Jul 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/25/96

Regarding Native Americans and democratic theory: this is not my area of
expertise, certainly. But certain English and French philosophers of the
17th and 18th centuries have to be given a lot of credit. For instance,
Montesquieu detailed almost the exact separation of powers that was written
in the U.S. constitution, and guys like Voltaire and Diderot wrote a lot
about religious freedom and personal liberty. The American Revolutionaries
were powerfully influenced by these liberal philosophers whose works were
still fresh when the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were
written. English tradition -- Magna Carta, the parliamentary system, etc., --
has to be given a lot of credit as well.

Doug

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Jul 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/25/96

Peter Keshavan wrote:

A little carelessly. It occurred to me since then that my comments on
Solon might have been more judiciously expressed. I'm sure that there
are intelligent, well-read people who happen not to be familiar with that
particular historical figure, and some of them who actually read my
recent post might be a tad annoyed. And justifiably so, so long as they
aren't making ill-founded claims about, say, Attic poetry, Athenian social
reform, or, say, the roots of Western democracy. :)

Mea culpa.

-Peter Keshavan

Srinivasamurthy Kasibhotla

unread,

Jul 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/25/96

I must say that among all my Indian friends,
there are exactly *zero* admirers of Dinesh D'Souza.
OTOH, quite a few think though he is a shame/disgrace to
all the Indian immigrants.

Vasu
va...@cadence.com

PS: BTW, What happened to the ng? I login after a long
time and at first I thought I was in a wrong place.
Tons of cross-posts, spams, very few regulars, and
there were actually a few on-topic posts by a anon poster.

Jeffrey Boulier

unread,

Jul 25, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/25/96

OK.. I managed to resist an opportunity to lecture on medical botany, but
I do have to say that I really have major problems with the way some of
these arguments have been phrased...

In article <19014.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>,
Ben Weiss <weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:

>I find it worth enough argument to note that there's a qualitative
>difference between 20,000 years and less than 400 years, and between
>settling a continent uninhabited by humans and displacing an
>indigenous population. "We're all immigrants" in this context is a
>cop-out used by those who'd rather ignore the sordid history of
>European-Native American relations, although it is useful as a retort
>to the Pat Buchanans among us.

1) Do you have any exact point to draw the lines of native vs non-native?
The Tartars, for example, are trying to return to their ancestral Crimean
homeland, trying to push out the Russians -- whom they had kicked out in
the thirteenth century. The Spanish have long residency in Spain, but the
Basques were there from the beginning of time. The Japanese are upstarts
who moved in on the Ainu.

And how do you think humans got down as far as the Southern Cone in
pre-Columbian days? It wasn't just the urge to explore, they were
_pushed_.

2) The thing that gets my personal goat --why do people keep lumping
Indians as some sort of monolithic grouping? The Cherokee are not the
Pueblo are not the Maya. Some tribes were pretty much stay-at-homes, but
others were at the time of European contact busy colonizing domains held
by other Indians. The Spanish, by way of example, arrived in the middle
of the collapse of the Arawak and their supplantation by the Caribe.

Hmf. Sometimes I just feel like siouxing people for over-generalization.

--Jeff B.,

Native American 'cause I was born here.

Cherokee speaker 'cause I am.

Ben Weiss

unread,

Jul 26, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/26/96

To keep this from getting any longer, I'm going to cut a few of the
more extreme digressions, e.g. the homeopathy thing, since I don't
think either of us is going to convince the other.

On 24 Jul 1996 20:52:31 GMT,
Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
>Ben Weiss wrote:
>>

[major snippage]

>:Basically, many indigenous techniques, in medicine and other areas,
>:are now being rediscovered because those who remember them no longer
>:get killed or lose their children for publicly revealing their
>:knowledge.
>
>When were doctors systematically dispatching Arnold Schwarzenegger to
>eliminate the last remaining mother and child known to possess the secret
>cure for prostate cancer?

Peter, read some history! Throughout the 19th and early 20th
centuries, white Americans did not distinguish between Native American
medicine and religion--they simply forbade any sort of cultural
practice whatsoever by forcing children into boarding schools where
they were forbidden even to speak their native languages.

>You snipped my expanded point, but you did not refute, or even attempt to
>challenge it. I'll ask again: If this marvellous knowledge has been so
>successfully eradicated, how on earth are you in any position to make the
>claim that it is the equivalent of that used in modern medicine?

I didn't say it was the equivalent in all cases, but that Native
American medicine included some very useful techniques, particularly
compared to Western medical knowledge of the time but including some
that are still new to the West today. I'll drop this point for a day
or two until I can do some research (which will have to wait until
after my law review article revision).

>:And logic tells us that when over 90% of a population has been lost,
>:it's unlikely that anywhere near 100% of its knowledge has survived;
>:therefore, the odds are that the Native Americans had many
>:useful techniques beyond those being rediscovered today.
>

>FWIW, there aren't any ancient Greeks left alive today, so we can probably
>agree that over 90% of their population has been lost.

To my knowledge--which is limited, and I'll defer to Matt Colvin if he
says otherwise--there has never been any systematic genocide committed
on the Greeks or deliberate attempt to wipe out their culture. Modern
Greece continued in uninterrupted descent from ancient Greece, and
Greek culture spread throughout the West via the Roman Empire with no
attempt at suppression.

>A decent amount
>of their knowledge has survived, because they had a system of written
>language- ditto the Babylonians, Hebrews, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and
>numerous others. Shall we argue whether the institution of committing
>learning to writing is objectively superior to the lack thereof?

Sure, I'll agree that that's a major disadvantage to cultures, such as
all Native North American cultures, that lacked writing. That doesn't
mean that they had nothing valid to offer.

[much rhetoric on both sides snipped]

>:Japan, you will note, was never colonized, and Korea
>:was only colonized by Japan itself.
>
>(That's funny, I thought only Europeans were capable of such atrocity.)
>Yes, I'm aware of these facts, but I'm not the one who claimed that
>"Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture back by
>centuries by destroying their economies."
>

I don't know much about the Japanese colonization of Korea. My
impression is that Japan, whatever atrocities it did commit, did not
overhaul the Korean economy (with an eye only toward its own needs) to
the same extent as the European powers. Compare, for example, D.R.
Sardesai, _Southeast Asia: Past and Present_, on Dutch practices in
Indonesia.

[big snip]

>
>:In your example, the motives of the Chinese were purely cultural.
>:What if, while the Europeans insisted on fomenting rebellions,
>:stealing land, forcibly converting indigenous populations to
>:Christianity and enslaving and obliterating entire cultures, the
>:Chinese fulfilled their economic motivations through trade with other
>:cultures for mutual benefit, with each culture bringing the advances
>:of the other back to their homeland? I would guess that at least some
>:cultural advances spread across Eurasia this way, and that this sort
>:of system might ultimately have produced as much success as
>:imperialism, with less waste of lives, knowledge and resources.
>

>In my now-snipped narrative, I hoped to make clear that Chinese navigation
>wasn't about economic motivations, and mutual benefit, and that it collapsed
>of its own weight, both because of and causing its failure to lead to any
>truly significant cultural advances.

My point exactly. European colonization was about benefit for only
one side. We've seen its effects. That doesn't make it superior to
the effects that could have come if the European merchants and sailors
had worked for *mutual* benefit. You appear to be positing that all
the destruction was justified because it was necessary to building the
technological society we have today. We simply don't know that.

>
>(snip)
>
>:>When you read Blackstone's Commentaries for your law classes, are you
>:>oppressing the English people by appropriating their knowledge, or are you
>:>learning from someone who knows something you don't? Just curious.
>
>:The latter, of course. It would be the former if I took what I liked
>:from it, then got an army together, conquered England, forbade the
>:English from using the parts I didn't like, and rewrote the books to
>:say that I invented the whole thing. European use of Arab and Indian
>:advancements in mathematics didn't follow this pattern; European
>:appropriation of Native American agricultural science, for example,
>:did.
>
>Please give one iota of evidence to support the claim you make in your last
>clause; I'm calling you on it.
>

I'll deal with this below.
>
>(snip)

>
>:You can find similar patterns in biological science. Native Americans
>:developed thousands of varieties of corn and potatoes that could grow
>:anywhere from Patagonia to Canada. Europeans took a few varieties of
>:potato home and, now blessed with a staple food that would grow more
>:reliably in the damp climates of northern Europe than wheat, began
>:study of the mechanics of genetics and evolution.
>
>Ben, which is a greater achievement- successful cultivation of plant crops
>indigenous to one's region, or discovery of the laws of segregation and
>independent assortment?

There's "successful cultivation," and then there's development of 3000
varieties of potato from a single species, *without* benefit of modern
genetic technology.

>Don't tell me one's practical, and the other theoretical. I want to know
>which is the greater achievement. You might want to consider which has
>been achieved around the world, and which was achieved for the first time
>less than two centuries ago in an Austrian monastary. By the way, Mendel
>used peas, not potatoes.

And, according to a recent newspaper story I read, doctored his data
to fit his theories--which should not diminish his achievement in
coming up with his theories. And I bet he had potatoes for dinner the
night he came up with them. :)

My whole point is that there's no need to rank achievements. The
value of Mendel's genetics is indisputable. So is the value of the
60% of all crops worldwide that were developed in the Americas to a
level of diversity unequaled anywhere else in the world, and by any
other culture until the Green Revolution of the latter half of this
century.

>(snip)

>
>:Europeans only developed real notions of individual liberty after
>:seeing how much of it Native Americans, in particular, enjoyed. The
>:Western canon is valuable for the extent and depth of its debate on
>:the subject, but it did not "invent" the concept in any way.
>

>All right, I'm calling you on the lies about the Iroquois. The source I
>have in front of me is Dinesh D'Souza's _The End of Racism_, complete with
>footnotes. I'll list the original citations at the end.
>

[Paraphrase of D'Souza p. 356 and supporting sources snipped]

>
>There you have it; I did my homework. Are you prepared to cite any contrary
>findings? If not, I can only conclude that you have uncritically swallowed
>an enormous quantity of matter commonly found in a pasture, and I have called
>you on your righteous expectorating it upon this newsgroup.

Well, the source I have in front of me is _Indian Givers_ by Jack
Weatherford (Fawcett/Ballantine, 1988), also appropriately footnoted.
I've seen corroboration elsewhere, but Weatherford has everything in
one place and writes very readably, which is why I own the book
instead of checking it out from the library.

Chapters 4 and 5 deal with most of my claims regarding agricultural
technology, particularly the importance of the potato. Weatherford
cites 17 sources in these two chapters, ranging from articles in the
journal _Agro-Ecosystems_ to Adam Smith. Regarding the historical
events I've mentioned, he draws particularly (but not exclusively) on
volume 1 of historian Fernand Braudel's _Civilization and Capitalism,
15th-18th Century_, which I'm told is *the* major work on the history
of European everyday life.

As for the matter of the League of the Iroquois, Weatherford lays out
the very striking parallels with our system in Chapter 8. The
influence of the Native American experience on American political
thought in general is described in Chapters 7 and 8. In these
chapters, Weatherford cites to 25 sources, including original writings
by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Michel de Montaigne and Alexis de
Tocqueville. His secondary sources are mainly historians, including
Henry Steele Commager and Frederick Jackson Turner (both *big* names,
with Commager being "establishment" enough to have been assigned at my
high school), with a few anthropological articles thrown in.

Weatherford, incidentally, is a professor of anthropology at
Macalester College in St. Paul. He's considered a popularizer, but
I've never heard his scholarship questioned. Dinesh D'Souza, IIRC, is
an employee of the American Enterprise Institute or one of those other
think-tanks specifically directed to disseminate right-wing
propaganda, and I *know* the quality of his scholarship is hotly
debated. I'm not even sure of his academic credentials--care to
enlighten me?

>And for what it's worth, I'm joining Matt in making some reading
>recomendations. Check out Book II of Thucydides, and read Pericles's Funeral
>Oration. Those DWEM's might have something to teach you yet.

Never claimed they didn't.
Ben

Scott Coon

unread,

Jul 26, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/26/96

In article <4t9361$r...@alnitak.usc.edu> kasi...@alnitak.usc.edu

(Srinivasamurthy Kasibhotla) writes:
> I must say that among all my Indian friends,
> there are exactly *zero* admirers of Dinesh D'Souza.
> OTOH, quite a few think though he is a shame/disgrace to
> all the Indian immigrants.

Sigh. Yeah, and I may feel that Pat Buchanan is the curse of the
Irish. Nevertheless, if he made an assertion of historical fact and
cited an article that supported it, I'd give him a _little_ credence
until I checked it out. P. Keshavan's excerpt from D'Souza's book
mentioned what looked like a peer-reviewed article on Franklin and the
Iroquois which was not by D'Souza himself. Whether you are persuaded
by the research and argument in that third person's article should be
the relevant question. I hope that the fact that D'Souza probably
agrees with it would not automatically convince you to disagree
without checking it out.

> PS: BTW, What happened to the ng? I login after a long
> time and at first I thought I was in a wrong place.
> Tons of cross-posts, spams, very few regulars, and
> there were actually a few on-topic posts by a anon poster.

The newsgroup has been targeded by net.loonies for several months
now. There's some movement toward a CFV for moderation, or possibly
switching to the rec. hierarchy and _then_ moderating -- lightly.
Things like automoderation to remove things crossposted to more than
n groups (for n > about 4), chucking obvious advertisements,
eliminating the false mailing list subscriptions, etc. I imagine
that this thread, far afield as it has gotten, would be allowed to
stay if for no other reason than that it has mentioned a ton of names
from deep within and from outside the Canon and may have motivated
some research and question-writing. (Sure.)

Anyway, I'd encourage you to just wade through the crap and hang on
until the Fall semester -- there will be enough folks back on-line
then to have a chance at pushing the moderation proposal through.
During the summer, we don't really have a chance.

Scott Coon
co...@math.uiuc.edu

Ben Weiss

unread,

Jul 27, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/27/96

On 25 Jul 1996 13:38:26 GMT,

Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
>Peter Keshavan wrote:
>
>A little carelessly. It occurred to me since then that my comments on
>Solon might have been more judiciously expressed. I'm sure that there
>are intelligent, well-read people who happen not to be familiar with that
>particular historical figure, and some of them who actually read my
>recent post might be a tad annoyed.

For the record, after your post I looked Solon up in my handy copy of
_It's Greek to Me: Brush Up Your Classics_. I knew I'd heard the
name, but I couldn't place it; the only Greek stuff I'm very
conversant with is mythology. We all have our weaknesses, unless
we're God or Tom Waters.

And justifiably so, so long as they
>aren't making ill-founded claims about, say, Attic poetry, Athenian social
>reform, or, say, the roots of Western democracy. :)

I took care of this in my last post. Which I sent before I thought of
challenging you to a one-on-one match at Philly. :)
Ben

Matt Colvin

unread,

Jul 28, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/28/96

In article <80166.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>, "Ben Weiss"
<weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:

> I took care of this in my last post. Which I sent before I thought of
> challenging you to a one-on-one match at Philly. :)

Trust me, Ben, this is not a good way to settle enmities from a.c.c-b.
I've tried it, and it sucked. :-)

Matt

--
"Biscuitry." -- Every member of the Maryland Academic Quiz Team, at some point or another.

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Jul 28, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/28/96

Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:

: I took care of this in my last post. Which I sent before I thought of
: challenging you to a one-on-one match at Philly. :)

I'll respond to that last post tomorrow after I've had the chance to check
up on your sources, but that last idea ain't bad. A pack of stereotypical
ACF Eurocentric stuff, a non-western cultures pack, and for the finale-
hmm... what would be appropriate? Got it! A Chip Beale pack! No, wait.
Never mind.

-Peter Keshavan

swiatek maribeth

unread,

Jul 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/29/96

co...@symcom.math.uiuc.edu (Scott Coon) writes:

>Scott Coon
>co...@math.uiuc.edu

You forgot, Scott, so I'll add it in for you:
the traditional "alt.college.college-bowl must be moderated"
(or perhaps just "duh" in this case.)

-- mb

--
______________________________________________________________________________

Ha, since you love me to ecstasy it follows you hate me to ecstasy.
______________________________________________________________________________

Jason Ronald Remy

unread,

Jul 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/29/96

Since Jeff has nicely made my points for me, I'll throw in my own ideas
on this debate.

In article <4t8obi$8...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>,
Jeffrey Boulier <jeff...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:

>1) Do you have any exact point to draw the lines of native vs non-native?

>2) The thing that gets my personal goat --why do people keep lumping
>Indians as some sort of monolithic grouping? The Cherokee are not the
>Pueblo are not the Maya. Some tribes were pretty much stay-at-homes, but
>others were at the time of European contact busy colonizing domains held
>by other Indians. The Spanish, by way of example, arrived in the middle
>of the collapse of the Arawak and their supplantation by the Caribe.

And Europeans are not the same Europeans. One must remember that the
copmetetive imperialism of the English and Spanish does not extend to
other European nations. The French for example did little in the way of
English style colonizing or Spanish style Conquistadoring, but instead
found themselves content with trading with the native peoples.

Also, to expand on the "not all native americans are the same" One should
remember that the imperialist Apache were busy pounding the Navaho into
submission, and that the "democractic" Iriquois were also busy beating
on their more monarchical Algonquian neighbors. The Tenochitilan Aztecs
were in the midst of a cold war with many of the neighboring city states,
And I should have to remind anyone that for every democratic Iriquois-
like state, there were a dozen monarchical Aztec-like states to match.
The incan empire had crumbled before the spanish ever landed, and the
Mayans were falling that way very quickly.

The Europeans did nothing to the various nations present on the American
continents they weren't already doing to eachother, they merely did it
better.

Remy

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Jul 29, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/29/96

I've been reading up on the Iroquois/Constitution bit, including looking
up Weatherford's sources. I'll respond to some of the rest of your article
here, and save my monumental research findings for another post, when I've
had more time to put things together. I'm having fun so far. :)

(snip)

>>:Basically, many indigenous techniques, in medicine and other areas,
>>:are now being rediscovered because those who remember them no longer
>>:get killed or lose their children for publicly revealing their
>>:knowledge.

>>When were doctors systematically dispatching Arnold Schwarzenegger to
>>eliminate the last remaining mother and child known to possess the secret
>>cure for prostate cancer?

>Peter, read some history! Throughout the 19th and early 20th
>centuries, white Americans did not distinguish between Native American
>medicine and religion--they simply forbade any sort of cultural
>practice whatsoever by forcing children into boarding schools where
>they were forbidden even to speak their native languages.

I agree with you that the loss of cultural lore is a bad thing. But that's
a far less ambitious claim than you make three paragraphs back, where you
imply that Evil Euros, seeking to suppress the Native Knowledge,
systematically sought it out and destroyed it for that express purpose.
This is, I think, hyperbole.

>>challenge it. I'll ask again: If this marvellous knowledge has been so
>>successfully eradicated, how on earth are you in any position to make the
>>claim that it is the equivalent of that used in modern medicine?

>I didn't say it was the equivalent in all cases, but that Native
>American medicine included some very useful techniques, particularly
>compared to Western medical knowledge of the time but including some
>that are still new to the West today. I'll drop this point for a day
>or two until I can do some research (which will have to wait until
>after my law review article revision).

No matter what your research finds, I think my point stands. Once more:
*If* this knowledge has been systematically eradicated and suppressed, how
are you or anyone in a position to make any statements about its efficacy?
You can't have it both ways. Either the Evil Euros wiped it out, in which
case no one can tell us anything about it, or enough of it survived that
it is possible to make judgments as to its validity.

In previous articles, you claimed that Evil Euros suppressed and destroyed
knowledge of Native American medical techniques. You also said that this
lost technology was in many cases equivalent to modern medicine. I wish
you luck with with your law review article, but I hope you don't have to
deal with a case in which the same Justice writes both the holding and a
dissent. ;)

>>:And logic tells us that when over 90% of a population has been lost,
>>:it's unlikely that anywhere near 100% of its knowledge has survived;
>>:therefore, the odds are that the Native Americans had many
>>:useful techniques beyond those being rediscovered today.

>>FWIW, there aren't any ancient Greeks left alive today, so we can probably
>>agree that over 90% of their population has been lost.

>To my knowledge--which is limited, and I'll defer to Matt Colvin if he
>says otherwise--there has never been any systematic genocide committed
>on the Greeks or deliberate attempt to wipe out their culture. Modern
>Greece continued in uninterrupted descent from ancient Greece, and
>Greek culture spread throughout the West via the Roman Empire with no
>attempt at suppression.

The reason Greek culture was perpetuated by the Romans was that the
conquerors recognized that the conquered was culturally superior. Also,
written language helps with the uninterrupted descent thing.

>>A decent amount
>>of their knowledge has survived, because they had a system of written
>>language- ditto the Babylonians, Hebrews, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and
>>numerous others. Shall we argue whether the institution of committing
>>learning to writing is objectively superior to the lack thereof?

>Sure, I'll agree that that's a major disadvantage to cultures, such as
>all Native North American cultures, that lacked writing. That doesn't
>mean that they had nothing valid to offer.

Ben, please! I'm not saying that they had nothing to offer. I am saying
that because writing allows the accurate, permanent preservation and
accumulation of thought, cultures that write things down are, in that
regard, objectively superior to those that don't.

You say the lack of the invention of writing is a "major disadvantage" as
if it were imposed from above! No culture in this hemisphere used a
written language, while several in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia did. Why
are you so reluctant to give credit where it is due?

>[much rhetoric on both sides snipped]

Allow me to restore some that, I think, doesn't meet the homeopathic
irreconcilability criterion:

Ben: Yup--Europeans took over the world and set everybody else's culture
Ben: back by centuries by destroying their economies.

(snip)

Me: Important question: You say "set...back by centuries." Set back relative
Me: to what? Towards what end were they progressing?

This is still a crucial question, whose answer might shed some light.

Me: Again, was the abolition of _sati_ a set-back of centuries?

So might this one's.

(snip)

>>In my now-snipped narrative, I hoped to make clear that Chinese navigation
>>wasn't about economic motivations, and mutual benefit, and that it collapsed
>>of its own weight, both because of and causing its failure to lead to any
>>truly significant cultural advances.

>My point exactly. European colonization was about benefit for only
>one side. We've seen its effects. That doesn't make it superior to
>the effects that could have come if the European merchants and sailors
>had worked for *mutual* benefit.

Just think how many points could have been scored at Penn Bowl if both
teams had worked together on all the bonuses, no matter whose they were!

I agree with you that the world would be a better place if throughout its
history, working for mutual benefit had been the prime motivator of human
action. Would that it were so. Read some game theory to see why it's not.
Axelrod's a great start.

Can you find me an example or two from history in which this cooperative
model of exploration took place, and/or did yield significant cultural
advances? "We've seen its effects," you say. I maintain that some of them
were highly desirable, and that no actual culture, other than that which
produced the age of exploration, could have achieved them.

Chinese navigational technology was long superior to European by a long
shot. But the Chinese weren't interested in or motivated by discovery as
the Europeans were. This is historical fact. Did Kublai Khan travel to
Venice, or did Marco Polo go to China?

>You appear to be positing that all
>the destruction was justified because it was necessary to building the
>technological society we have today. We simply don't know that.

Not quite. I am saying that wringing one's hands and denouncing the West
is simplistic, myopic, and Whiggish.

(snip)

>>Ben, which is a greater achievement- successful cultivation of plant crops
>>indigenous to one's region, or discovery of the laws of segregation and
>>independent assortment?

>There's "successful cultivation," and then there's development of 3000
>varieties of potato from a single species, *without* benefit of modern
>genetic technology.

OK- insert "very successful cultivation" in the above question.

>>Don't tell me one's practical, and the other theoretical. I want to know
>>which is the greater achievement. You might want to consider which has
>>been achieved around the world, and which was achieved for the first time
>>less than two centuries ago in an Austrian monastary. By the way, Mendel
>>used peas, not potatoes.

>And, according to a recent newspaper story I read, doctored his data
>to fit his theories--which should not diminish his achievement in
>coming up with his theories.

I've heard this charge made, too. I don't know enough details of the case
to make an evaluation of it, but I agree with your assessment at any rate.

>And I bet he had potatoes for dinner the night he came up with them. :)

Ha! I caught you in another multiculturalist lie! Dinesh D'Souza says he
had fetticine alfredo that night. (Of course the Chinese invented pasta,
which Marco Polo brought back to Italy...)

(snip of Iroquois stuff which I'll take care of in a later post)

>Weatherford, incidentally, is a professor of anthropology at
>Macalester College in St. Paul. He's considered a popularizer, but
>I've never heard his scholarship questioned.

I'll do that. ;) I haven't spent a huge amount of time on him yet, but I've
already found one instance of his misrepresenting a source.

>Dinesh D'Souza, IIRC, is
>an employee of the American Enterprise Institute or one of those other
>think-tanks specifically directed to disseminate right-wing
>propaganda, and I *know* the quality of his scholarship is hotly
>debated. I'm not even sure of his academic credentials--care to
>enlighten me?

Don't know his credentials off the top of my head, but they're not relevant.
What's important is the quality of the arguments he does or doesn't make.
You questioned the accuracy of the source he cited, and I'm now investigating
the issue on my own. Note that I'm not concerning myself with Weatherford's
credentials, but the quality of his argumentation for a handful of specific
points.

And while you and I can probably agree that a lot that comes from AEI is
out in right field, we would join together in attacking it, not by calling
it "right wing propaganda" but by critically examining the strength of its
arguments. I'm sure the Minnesota Law Review does more than say that the
quality of some judge's scholarship is hotly debated, now doesn't it?

(snip)

I'll report back to you on Weatherford just as soon as I can.

-Peter Keshavan

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Jul 30, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/30/96

Srinivasamurthy Kasibhotla (kasi...@alnitak.usc.edu) wrote:
: I must say that among all my Indian friends,

: there are exactly *zero* admirers of Dinesh D'Souza.
: OTOH, quite a few think though he is a shame/disgrace to
: all the Indian immigrants.

Among mine, one's interned at the American Enterprise Institute, and one
first read him at my encouraging, and although I don't know whether she
could be called an admirer, she found his writing stimulating and thought-
provoking.

Of them, there are exactly *zero* who think all people of similar ancestry
should think alike, or that what is done by one individual should be
regarded as representative of that individual's ethnic group.

-Peter Keshavan

Jeffrey Boulier

unread,

Jul 30, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/30/96

In article <4tj1f5$e...@copland.udel.edu>,

Jason Ronald Remy <re...@copland.udel.edu> wrote:
>Since Jeff has nicely made my points for me, I'll throw in my own ideas
>on this debate.
>
>In article <4t8obi$8...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>,
>Jeffrey Boulier <jeff...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu> wrote:
>

[snipping a bunch, most of which I agree with]

The Tenochitilan Aztecs
>were in the midst of a cold war with many of the neighboring city states,

The ones they hadn't overwhelmed, perhaps... But they'd achieved
some degree of control over everything in the area. Cortez was victorious
more because he got the tributary states to rebel then because he got the
independent powers to step in.

>The incan empire had crumbled before the spanish ever landed,

Not quite accurate. It highly unstable, but still very powerful.
The Empire had just been through a devastating civil war between two rival
claimants before Pizzarro arrived.

and the
>Mayans were falling that way very quickly.

The Mayan kingdoms fell long before the Spanish made their
appearance, by that time all of the old cities had been abandoned.

--Jeff B.

--
Tantaene animis caelestibus irae?

Ben Weiss

unread,

Jul 30, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/30/96

Another episode...

On 29 Jul 1996 23:52:52 GMT,

Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
>
>(snip)
>
>>>:Basically, many indigenous techniques, in medicine and other areas,
>>>:are now being rediscovered because those who remember them no longer
>>>:get killed or lose their children for publicly revealing their
>>>:knowledge.
>

[some byplay snipped]

>
>I agree with you that the loss of cultural lore is a bad thing. But that's
>a far less ambitious claim than you make three paragraphs back, where you
>imply that Evil Euros, seeking to suppress the Native Knowledge,
>systematically sought it out and destroyed it for that express purpose.
>This is, I think, hyperbole.

Re-reading the paragraph, I can see where you got that implication,
which wasn't my intention. What I meant was what I explained:
European colonizers systematically attempted to destroy Native
American cultures without checking to see whether they had anything
valuable to offer. I don't think you can read an account of the 19th
and early 20th century boarding schools for Native Americans without
coming to this conclusion.

[more snips]

>*If* this knowledge has been systematically eradicated and suppressed, how
>are you or anyone in a position to make any statements about its efficacy?
>You can't have it both ways. Either the Evil Euros wiped it out, in which
>case no one can tell us anything about it, or enough of it survived that
>it is possible to make judgments as to its validity.
>

This next point was meant as a partial answer (which obviously led to
its own tangent).

>
>>>:And logic tells us that when over 90% of a population has been lost,
>>>:it's unlikely that anywhere near 100% of its knowledge has survived;
>>>:therefore, the odds are that the Native Americans had many
>>>:useful techniques beyond those being rediscovered today.
>
>>>FWIW, there aren't any ancient Greeks left alive today, so we can probably
>>>agree that over 90% of their population has been lost.
>
>>To my knowledge--which is limited, and I'll defer to Matt Colvin if he
>>says otherwise--there has never been any systematic genocide committed
>>on the Greeks or deliberate attempt to wipe out their culture. Modern
>>Greece continued in uninterrupted descent from ancient Greece, and
>>Greek culture spread throughout the West via the Roman Empire with no
>>attempt at suppression.
>
>The reason Greek culture was perpetuated by the Romans was that the
>conquerors recognized that the conquered was culturally superior. Also,
>written language helps with the uninterrupted descent thing.
>

There you go, then; an example of cultural contact, albeit by
conquest, with respect for rather than obliteration of the conquered
culture. And obviously I agree with your second point.

>
>>>A decent amount
>>>of their knowledge has survived, because they had a system of written
>>>language- ditto the Babylonians, Hebrews, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and
>>>numerous others. Shall we argue whether the institution of committing
>>>learning to writing is objectively superior to the lack thereof?
>
>>Sure, I'll agree that that's a major disadvantage to cultures, such as
>>all Native North American cultures, that lacked writing. That doesn't
>>mean that they had nothing valid to offer.
>
>Ben, please! I'm not saying that they had nothing to offer. I am saying
>that because writing allows the accurate, permanent preservation and
>accumulation of thought, cultures that write things down are, in that
>regard, objectively superior to those that don't.

Yes--IN THAT REGARD. Which is what I've been saying all along.
Western culture has created greater achievements in *some* things,
other cultures in others. You've argued that Western culture AS A
WHOLE is "objectively" superior to other cultures, to the extent that
it should be the predominant object of academic study *due to its
superiority.* This I don't agree with.

My position is that we live in a country whose roots are in a
combination of European, Native American and African cultures, and
that we should give credence to all three to the extent that they
influenced where we are today. (Asian influence has been more recent,
although it has made some cultural inroads since the 1960s.) Because
academia has tended to emphasize the West to the exclusion of all
other cultures, that necessarily means a re-examination of how we
study both. With the West, it means we have to recognize the ugly
parts, just like history books always make room to talk about Aztec
human sacrifice and Africans selling other Africans into slavery.
All of these things were true and should be noted as facts. With
non-Western cultures, it means recognizing the things that have not
been included in the cultural canon due to racism.

Saul Bellow's response to this type of argument is: "When the Zulus
have a Tolstoy, we will read him." To which my answer, paraphrasing
Ishmael Reed, is: Does Mr. Bellow speak Zulu? Did his college offer a
Zulu literature course? In other words, does he have any evidence
that the Zulus *haven't* had an artist of Tolstoy's caliber?
(Certainly the South African government, until recently, would have
had no interest in publishing such a figure.) Of course, real life is
a bit more complicated than that--it's quite possible that the Zulu
Tolstoy expressed his or her art in a form that Bellow wouldn't
recognize as being equivalent in depth and subtlety to the 1000-page
novel (perhaps oral epic poetry set to music).

I'm not arguing that anyone should stop studying Tolstoy (Thomas
Hardy, maybe :)), or that the first Zulu writer you come across should
automatically be added to the canon. What I do argue is that the fact
that the achievements of non-Western cultures *have* been
suppressed--sometimes through racism, sometimes through failure to
recognize them as accomplishments--means that we need to take a fresh
look at what's out there, and also at what it is we are studying and
why.

Martin Luther King drew on Gandhi for philosophical inspiration.
Gandhi drew on the traditional pacifist principles of Hinduism and
Jainism and on Thoreau. Thoreau drew on Enlightenment writings about
liberty. The Enlightenment philosophers drew on the model of Native
American societies and on the writings of ancient Greece. Thus,
the philosophies all of these cultures have contributed in a positive
way to our society. And if academia is the search for truth about
significant things, then all of them deserve study, both of their
strengths and weaknesses--truth deserves no less. So why should
anyone argue that the Greek component of all of this is superior to
the Hindu one?

Didn't mean to go that long--back to regularly scheduled swordplay. :)

>You say the lack of the invention of writing is a "major disadvantage" as
>if it were imposed from above! No culture in this hemisphere used a
>written language, while several in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia did. Why
>are you so reluctant to give credit where it is due?
>

You're reading too much into--well, *something* I said. I *never*
implied that anyone had imposed lack of writing on Native Americans.
And I do give credit to those cultures that developed literacy--its
value in preserving knowledge is indisputable.
>
>[point which I really think I answered snipped]

>
>Me: Again, was the abolition of _sati_ a set-back of centuries?
>

No. Sati was a terrible thing. So was human sacrifice, practiced by
both the Greeks and the Aztecs. So is the treatment of women today in
some African and Islamic cultures. So was chattel slavery as
practiced in the U.S. You can make a very long list of cultures with
horrific features, Western and non-Western. My "set back by
centuries" remark had to do largely with the economic aspects of
colonization, which disrupted the systems by which people kept
themselves fed and thus prevented literary and scientific achievements
among colonized peoples, which is what we had started off talking
about. Granted, the abolition of _sati_ has led to great literary and
scientific achievement by Indian women--just like the end of Native
American genocide opened the door for the literary achievements of
Native Americans like N. Scott Momaday and Louise Erdrich.

>(snip)

>
>Can you find me an example or two from history in which this cooperative
>model of exploration took place, and/or did yield significant cultural
>advances? "We've seen its effects," you say. I maintain that some of them
>were highly desirable, and that no actual culture, other than that which
>produced the age of exploration, could have achieved them.

Colonization has led to some positive effects, just like this country
might never have become an economic power without slavery. That
doesn't mean we can ignore the human costs of both, or posit a better
model for the future.

>
>>You appear to be positing that all

>>the destruction [of colonialism] was justified because it was necessary

to building the
>>technological society we have today. We simply don't know that.
>
>Not quite. I am saying that wringing one's hands and denouncing the West
>is simplistic, myopic, and Whiggish.

"Whiggish?" Better than Toryish, I suppose. :)

Let me make this perfectly clear: I am not out to "denounce the West."
I believe we should set the record straight and accord credit and blame
where they are due to all sides. Part of that is not justifying
atrocities, committed by *anyone,* with the excuse that things would
be worse if they hadn't happened. Without the Holocaust, we probably
wouldn't have Israel, but I know of no Jew who would justify the
Holocaust on that ground (and some Palestinians who don't think Israel
is a very good idea).
>
>(snip)

>
>>Weatherford, incidentally, is a professor of anthropology at
>>Macalester College in St. Paul. He's considered a popularizer, but
>>I've never heard his scholarship questioned.
>
>I'll do that. ;) I haven't spent a huge amount of time on him yet, but I've
>already found one instance of his misrepresenting a source.

Which D'Souza, of course, has never done. ;)

>
>>Dinesh D'Souza, IIRC, is
>>an employee of the American Enterprise Institute or one of those other
>>think-tanks specifically directed to disseminate right-wing
>>propaganda, and I *know* the quality of his scholarship is hotly
>>debated. I'm not even sure of his academic credentials--care to
>>enlighten me?
>
>Don't know his credentials off the top of my head, but they're not relevant.

Oh, aren't they? You were the one saying you'd rather see a surgeon
than a "witch doctor." Wouldn't you give a bit more weight to an
article on medicine written by an M.D. than one written by a P.R.
flack for an insurance company? Or a homeopath? :)

>And while you and I can probably agree that a lot that comes from AEI is
>out in right field, we would join together in attacking it, not by calling
>it "right wing propaganda" but by critically examining the strength of its
>arguments. I'm sure the Minnesota Law Review does more than say that the
>quality of some judge's scholarship is hotly debated, now doesn't it?

Credibility of the source is always an issue in evaluating statements,
and knowledge is an aspect of credibility. I'd take the word of a
scholar with a Ph.D. in a relevant field who has spent years studying
Native American cultures over an ideological dilettante who decides to
write a book criticizing multiculturalism, which becomes widely read
due to the size of his P.R. budget. (Sometime, read up on the P.R.
machine surrounding Charles Murray of _Bell Curve_ fame.)
Ben

swiatek maribeth

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Jul 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/31/96

co...@math.uiuc.edu (Scott Coon) writes:

>Anyway, interesting book. I guess these summer flame wars are worth
>something, neh? :)

Seems to me that in the course of this argument, all of you have come up with
enough information to satisfy the "diversity" requirements of a dozen or so
packets. Start writing!

-- maribeth "you know, there aren't enough Polish questions either..." swiatek

Ben Weiss

unread,

Jul 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/31/96

[In response to Scott Coon, who I'm not directly excerpting:]

Well, you've listed a lot of differences between the League of the
Iroquois and the U.S. system. Here are the main points Weatherford
makes. If Snow contradicts something, let me know.

Similarities between the League of the Iroquois and the U.S. system:

- The federal system. The councils of each of the five tribes
governed their internal affairs, but also met as a Grand Council to
deal with nationwide and foreign affairs. Each member of the Grand
Council had equal weight. This is the parallel most generally
cited (I've seen it outside of Weatherford as well)--where else, in
the 1700s, was there a model of internally self-governing nations
handling foreign affairs as a federation?

- Members of elected tribal councils elected delegates to Grand
Council, cited as a parallel to the Senate being elected by state
legislatures. (Citing Charles Thomson, Appendix 1 to Thomas
Jefferson's _Notes on the State of Virginia_--see below.)

- Separation of civilian and military authorities, so that council
members could not simultaneously hold military office--not the
situation in Britain. (Citing Lewis Henry Morgan, _The League of the
Iroquois_ at 72.)

- Impeachment, in the case of the Iroquois by the women of the clan.
Weatherford points out that British monarchs ruled until death. (Can
British MP's be impeached? Did Parliament have real power in the
1700s?) (Citing Alexander A. Goldenweiser, "Iroquois Social
Organization," in Roger C. Owen et al., _The North American Indians_,
at 570.)

- The League allowed for admission of new nations, e.g. the
Tuscarora. Weatherford takes this as precedent for the practice of
treating Western territories as future states rather than as colonies
as per Britain, although he admits there is no direct proof of this.

- Decorum. Like the Grand Council, the U.S. Congress addresses
members by title rather than by name ("The senior Senator from
Minnesota"). Only one person can speak at a time and interruption is
not permitted (contrasted with the shouting down in the British
Parliament). Voting is by individuals persuaded to compromise rather
than by parties forming coalitions and controlling individual votes.
(Citing Bruce E. Johansen, _Forgotten Founders_, and Bruce A. Burton,
"Iroquois Confederate Law and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution,"
_Northeast Indian Quarterly_, Fall 1986.)

Evidence for links between the two:

- Benjamin Franklin, while serving as Indian Commissioner in
Pennsylvania in the 1750s, calls on delegates to 1754 Albany Congress
to emulate Iroquois federal system. (Citing Edmund Wilson, _Apologies
to the Iroquois_, at 46; Robert A. Hecht, _Continents in Collision),
at 72). Weatherford writes that Franklin urged adoption of several
Iroquois features, including that members of Congress not be paid,
that Congress be unicameral and called the Grand Council, and that
military officers be elected by troops. (Weatherford draws a few
parallels to these features that were adopted later, e.g. the U.S.
military's abandonment of the European practice of allowing the
wealthy to purchase commissions as officers.)

- Continental Congress secretary Charles Thomson spent years studying
Indian political systems. At Thomas Jefferson's request, he wrote a
long appendix on Indian social systems for Jefferson's _Notes on the
State of Virginia_, particularly noting that tribal councils elected
delegates to the national council. (Citing Charles Thomson, Appendix
1 in Jefferson's _Notes_ at 203.) Jefferson himself wrote
ethnographic studies on the Indians and proposed further research by
the University of Virginia. (Jefferson, _Notes_ at 151.)

Nothing I wrote here directly contradicts Snow, and much of it can
co-exist. Without knowing the specifics of Franklin's Albany Plan of
Union, it's hard to compare, but I think it's fair to say that some
parallels do exist, at least when one compares the Constitution *as
adopted* to Britain *at the time*.
Ben

Matt Colvin

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Jul 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/31/96

In article <94509.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>, "Ben Weiss"
<weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> wrote:
[snip]

> No. Sati was a terrible thing. So was human sacrifice, practiced by

> both the Greeks and the Aztecs. [snip]

Did you really think you could make this statement and get away with it?
Gaius Stern, Seth Kendall, Chris Sloan -- have you guys ever heard of any
evidence for this?

I sure as hell haven't. In fact, AFAIK, there is NO good evidence at all
that the ancient Greeks practiced human sacrifice. In fact, they
considered it a barbarian practice and unholy (anosion). While there are
scattered reports of fringe cults killing in the name of deity, these are
both isolated and unsubstantial and usually best understood as strangers'
misunderstanding of another religion (e.g. the later widespread belief
that the Christian eucharist was a form of cannibalism or an uninformed
account of what went on in a Mithraeum).

The fact is that the Greeks saw human sacrifice as wickedness, and anyone
who performed it was a criminal. Note that this is the same belief we
have in modern society. It is the direct opposite of the public,
state-mandated, devotional bloodletting that the Aztecs practiced in the
name of Huitzilopochtli.

Or are you basing this claim not on any historical evidence, but on the
story of Iphigenia? I doubt you'd like it if I used myths about American
Indians as evidence for what they actually did.

It would be best for you either to produce sources for this claim of
yours, or better yet, stop making ignorant statements about ancient
Greece. I can only imagine that you derived your information from some
writer whose scholarship is as falsehood-filled as your own: Who cares
about the truth, so long as lies prove that all cultures are equal (in
this case, equally depraved)?

Scott Coon

unread,

Jul 31, 1996, 3:00:00 AM7/31/96

In article <94213.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>, "Ben Weiss"
<weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> writes:

> >:Europeans only developed real notions of individual liberty after
> >:seeing how much of it Native Americans, in particular, enjoyed. The
> >:Western canon is valuable for the extent and depth of its debate on
> >:the subject, but it did not "invent" the concept in any way.

[snip -- BTW, the above is from an earlier article than the rest. In case
it was not intended to be supported by the following, mea culpa for the
inclusion]

> Well, the source I have in front of me is _Indian Givers_ by Jack
> Weatherford (Fawcett/Ballantine, 1988), also appropriately footnoted.
> I've seen corroboration elsewhere, but Weatherford has everything in
> one place and writes very readably, which is why I own the book
> instead of checking it out from the library.

Ben, I went to one of the academic bookstores here and couldn't find this
work. However, I did find _Iroquois_, by Dean R. Snow (Blackwell Publishers,
1994, reprinted 1996). Snow is (according to the jacket) the head of the
anthropology department at Penn State, with previous books on Native American
archaeology and history.

> As for the matter of the League of the Iroquois, Weatherford lays out
> the very striking parallels with our system in Chapter 8. The
> influence of the Native American experience on American political
> thought in general is described in Chapters 7 and 8. In these
> chapters, Weatherford cites to 25 sources, including original writings
> by Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, Michel de Montaigne and Alexis de
> Tocqueville. His secondary sources are mainly historians, including
> Henry Steele Commager and Frederick Jackson Turner (both *big* names,
> with Commager being "establishment" enough to have been assigned at my
> high school), with a few anthropological articles thrown in.

Snow's account is chronological, so the information on the structure of
the League is rather spread out, but most of it is in Chapter 4. I found
the following: from the time of the founding, there were officially 50
members (League Chiefs) of the decision-making body. Of these, 9 were
Mohawk, 9 Oneida, 10 Cayuga, 8 Seneca, and 14 Onondaga. The Mohawk,
Onondaga, and Seneca nations were "Older Brothers" and the Cayuga and Oneida
"Younger Brothers". Note that these designations have nothing to do
with the number of representatives. For decision-making, these designations
had very little function, since everything had to be UNANIMOUS. No such
thing as "majority rule". Nor was there any enforcement -- if there was
no unanimity, nations could act unilaterally, as long as they didn't harm
the other nations in the process.

Another point -- the chiefs were chosen by the senior women of those clans
strong enough to claim the right to a representative. Each chief was
selected to replace a specific person, and was given that person's name
to permanently replace their own. The Iroquois apparently felt that the
new chief was the _same person_ as the one he replaced. This belief about
renaming individuals to change who they actually are appears in other contexts
throughout the book.

This is completely different from our system -- we pick individual people
more-or-less on the basis of their own merit. We do not make any real
effort to choose people who are most suitable for housing the immortal spirit
of Jefferson or Madison and serving as their avatars. The Iroquois League
sounds less and less to me like a system based on a view of individuals as
equals.

By the way, in chapter 10 Snow discusses Franklin's Albany Plan of Union,
arguing that it is fundamentally different, and that this is the case
because Franklin recognized that a consensus-based system with no executive
authority would not work for the colonies. On the US Constitution, Snow
writes:

A few writers have recently proposed that the substance of the
plan and even the substance of the later United States Constitution
also drew upon ideas embedded in the League. This idea is very
popular with the general public and with politicians; New York's
Governor Cuomo and the United States Congress have even given it
credence. There is, however, little or no evidence that the
framers of the Constitution sitting in Philadelphia drew much
inspiration from the League. It can even be argued that such claims
muddle and denigrate the subtle and remarkable features of Iroquios
government. The two forms of government are distinctive and
individually remarkable in conception. It serves no legitimate
long-term purpose to confuse the two, or to attempt to make either
a derivative from the other. Yet the tempation to demonstrate that
the United States Constitution was derived from a Native American
form of government remains, for ephemeral political purposes, too
strong for some to resist.

In a footnote to this paragraph (which he admits is "the most controversial
offered in this book") he suggests the sources

Grinde, D. A., Jr. and Johansen, B.E. 1991 _Exemplar of Liberty:
Native America and the Evolution of Democracy._ UCLA American Indian
Studies Center, LA.

Johansen, B.E. 1990. Native American Societies and the Evolution of
Democracy in America, 1600-1800. _Ethnohistory_ 37: 279-90

Tooker, E.J. 1988. The United States Constitution and the Iroquois
League. _Ethnohistory_ 35: 305-36

--- 1990. Rejoinder to Johansen. _Ethnohistory_ 37: 291-7

and Snow states in this footnote that there is no _direct_ evidence for
Iroquois influence on the Constitution.

Anyway, interesting book. I guess these summer flame wars are worth
something, neh? :)

Scott Coon
co...@math.uiuc.edu

Scott Coon

unread,

Aug 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/2/96

A few points in response; perhaps more later (I don't have the Snow
book in the office today).

In article <91596.w...@gold.tc.umn.edu>, "Ben Weiss"

<weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu> writes:
> [In response to Scott Coon, who I'm not directly excerpting:]
>
> Well, you've listed a lot of differences between the League of the
> Iroquois and the U.S. system. Here are the main points Weatherford
> makes. If Snow contradicts something, let me know.
>
> Similarities between the League of the Iroquois and the U.S. system:
>
> - The federal system. The councils of each of the five tribes
> governed their internal affairs, but also met as a Grand Council to
> deal with nationwide and foreign affairs. Each member of the Grand
> Council had equal weight. This is the parallel most generally
> cited (I've seen it outside of Weatherford as well)--where else, in
> the 1700s, was there a model of internally self-governing nations
> handling foreign affairs as a federation?

I'll concede some possible similarity to the status of the US under the
Aricles of Confederation, but as I said in my Snow article before,
the Iroquois nations were allowed to do as they pleased if there were
no _unanimity_ on the Grand Council. This would definitely insure that
each member had equal weight, but it isn't exactly democracy. That isn't
the case in the Constitution, which pretty explicitly aims for a strong
federal system based on majority rule (esp. in the ratification and
amendment clauses).

Speaking of the Articles of Confederation, it's pretty reasonable that right
after the war, the individual colonies would have wanted to go back
to the relative autonomy they enjoyed before the war, which could create
the weakness of the pre-Constitution federal system without the need for
any inspiration whatsoever.

> - Members of elected tribal councils elected delegates to Grand
> Council, cited as a parallel to the Senate being elected by state
> legislatures. (Citing Charles Thomson, Appendix 1 to Thomas
> Jefferson's _Notes on the State of Virginia_--see below.)

I'm not familiar with this work. What is the publication date?

> - Separation of civilian and military authorities, so that council
> members could not simultaneously hold military office--not the
> situation in Britain. (Citing Lewis Henry Morgan, _The League of the
> Iroquois_ at 72.)

Yes, we don't allow a sitting Senator to be Commander-In-Chief, but we
do elect that office nonetheless. The Iroquois War Chief was a temporary
position that required an appointed Grand Council member to step out of
his standard role and into the new one, giving up civilian duties. Our
War Chief has other, civilian duties that he fulfills simultaneously.

> - Impeachment, in the case of the Iroquois by the women of the clan.
> Weatherford points out that British monarchs ruled until death. (Can
> British MP's be impeached? Did Parliament have real power in the
> 1700s?) (Citing Alexander A. Goldenweiser, "Iroquois Social
> Organization," in Roger C. Owen et al., _The North American Indians_,
> at 570.)

I don't know about impeachment for MP's, although (trivia!) I'll
irrelevantly stick in that they can't technically resign. They get
appointed to something like Head Gamekeeper at Windsor Castle (an
office of profit or trust, which is also barred to MP's, like the US),
which automatically expels them from Parliament. At any rate, on your
real question, the power of Parliament was growing pretty rapidly during
the 1700's, but was not absolute. No references at the moment, although
I seem to recall that Parliament was the main power behind starting
the War of Jenkin's Ear (i.e., not the monarch's idea).

> - The League allowed for admission of new nations, e.g. the
> Tuscarora. Weatherford takes this as precedent for the practice of
> treating Western territories as future states rather than as colonies
> as per Britain, although he admits there is no direct proof of this.

But this can be explained away as well by the ex-colonies saying "gee,
being colonies sucked. Why would we impose that on others, particularly
when they aren't separated from us by an ocean and can not only rebel,
but invade?"

> - Decorum. Like the Grand Council, the U.S. Congress addresses
> members by title rather than by name ("The senior Senator from
> Minnesota"). Only one person can speak at a time and interruption is
> not permitted (contrasted with the shouting down in the British
> Parliament).

Not a constitutional issue, but a matter of parliamentary procedure.
I might be willing to accept that the Iroquois League taught us to
be polite to each other. :)

> Voting is by individuals persuaded to compromise rather
> than by parties forming coalitions and controlling individual votes.
> (Citing Bruce E. Johansen, _Forgotten Founders_, and Bruce A. Burton,
> "Iroquois Confederate Law and the Origins of the U.S. Constitution,"
> _Northeast Indian Quarterly_, Fall 1986.)

This contradicts Snow, I think. Again, Snow says that decisions were
unanimous or not at all. This system doesn't really allow for "voting".
The majority-rules system in Congress insures that there will be just
enough compromise to pass something, and no more.

[snipped stuff on Franklin's views in the 1750's and the book by Jefferson]

> Nothing I wrote here directly contradicts Snow, and much of it can
> co-exist. Without knowing the specifics of Franklin's Albany Plan of
> Union, it's hard to compare, but I think it's fair to say that some
> parallels do exist, at least when one compares the Constitution *as
> adopted* to Britain *at the time*.
> Ben

But the discussion is not Iroquois vs. Britain. It is Iroquois vs. Ancient-
Greece-as-analyzed-and-modified-by-1700's-philosophers.

Scott Coon
co...@math.uiuc.edu

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Aug 2, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/2/96

Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:

It's been a busy week, and I haven't had as much time as I would have
liked to look into these things. I'm not sure that I will in the
immediate future, so I'm going to go ahead and respond to this and
another article anyway.

(large snip)

: - Benjamin Franklin, while serving as Indian Commissioner in

: Pennsylvania in the 1750s, calls on delegates to 1754 Albany Congress
: to emulate Iroquois federal system. (Citing Edmund Wilson, _Apologies
: to the Iroquois_, at 46; Robert A. Hecht, _Continents in Collision),
: at 72).

Here's what Weatherford says on page 136:

"...Franklin advocated that the new American government incorporate
many of the same features as the government of the Iroquois [Wilson,
p. 46]."

Haven't checked out the Hecht yet, but I did look up the Wilson. I'm
quoting from page 47 of Wilson (There's nothing relevant on 46):

"Standing Arrow (an Iroquois) now told me- quite truthfully, though
I do not remember to have heard it- that Benjamin Franklin had been
influenced by the example of the Iroquois Confederacy in his project
for uniting the American colonies. It has always, I found, been the
boast of the Iroquois that our written constitution, with its federal
authority balanced against states' rights, was derived from their
unwritten one..."

This is exceedingly intellectually dishonest. Wilson quotes an Iroquois as
saying that Franklin was influenced by the Iroquois, and for Weatherford,
that establishes historical fact. Now, I had to check out the Wilson for
myself to find that out. Other portions of the Weatherford, which I am
more qualified to evaluate on the basis of my own knowledge, have not
greatly impressed me.

(More snippage)

-Peter Keshavan

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Aug 3, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/3/96

In our last episode, Ben Weiss (weis...@gold.tc.umn.edu) wrote:

(snip)

:Re-reading the paragraph, I can see where you got that implication,

:which wasn't my intention. What I meant was what I explained:
:European colonizers systematically attempted to destroy Native
:American cultures without checking to see whether they had anything
:valuable to offer. I don't think you can read an account of the 19th
:and early 20th century boarding schools for Native Americans without
:coming to this conclusion.

As I've said before, I agree that the loss of cultural lore is a bad thing.
When languages and art forms, for example, go extinct, we all lose
something. But you've gone even further than this, making wholly unfounded
specific claims about the value of what Native Americans might have had to
offer.

I assume we can agree it is unfortunate if linguists can't test some
syntactic hypothesis on Choctaw, because there are no living speakers of
that language. But go far beyond that, and we have a problem. You
asserted that substantial medical knowledge has been lost, and knowledge
equivalent to that of modern medicine. I responded that your claim was
false, and that at any rate, your argument was internally inconsistent.
More on that below.

My point here is that some of our disagreement may hinge on how we are to
interpret the phrase "anything valuable to offer."

:>*If* this knowledge has been systematically eradicated and suppressed, how

:>are you or anyone in a position to make any statements about its efficacy?
:>You can't have it both ways. Either the Evil Euros wiped it out, in which
:>case no one can tell us anything about it, or enough of it survived that
:>it is possible to make judgments as to its validity.
>
:This next point was meant as a partial answer (which obviously led to
:its own tangent).
>
:>>>:And logic tells us that when over 90% of a population has been lost,
:>>>:it's unlikely that anywhere near 100% of its knowledge has survived;
:>>>:therefore, the odds are that the Native Americans had many
:>>>:useful techniques beyond those being rediscovered today.

First, my point still stands. You are in no position to make any positive
claims about that knowledge if it still exists. It just won't do to say
"They probably invented the bicycle, but since 90% of their population has
been lost, that knowledge didn't survive." Based on what you have said, the
strongest position you can remotely justifiably take is strict agnosticism.

Furthermore, even that position is questionable. Surely we can extrapolate
from what information we do have to get some idea of what we might be
missing. "Logic" does not tell us anything of the kind which you claim it
does. Suppose 90% of Americans were to be killed. Do you really think that
there would remain no one who could recite Shakespeare, or derive Kepler's
Laws?

Finally, the writing bit, on which more later.

(snip)

:>The reason Greek culture was perpetuated by the Romans was that the

:>conquerors recognized that the conquered was culturally superior. Also,
:>written language helps with the uninterrupted descent thing.

:There you go, then; an example of cultural contact, albeit by
:conquest, with respect for rather than obliteration of the conquered
:culture. And obviously I agree with your second point.

And you *missed* my first point, which was that in the case of the Greeks
and Romans, the conquered was culturally superior to the conqueror. That
wasn't the case in the Americas.

:>>>A decent amount

:>>>of their knowledge has survived, because they had a system of written
:>>>language- ditto the Babylonians, Hebrews, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, and
:>>>numerous others. Shall we argue whether the institution of committing
:>>>learning to writing is objectively superior to the lack thereof?
>
:>>Sure, I'll agree that that's a major disadvantage to cultures, such as
:>>all Native North American cultures, that lacked writing. That doesn't
:>>mean that they had nothing valid to offer.
>
:>Ben, please! I'm not saying that they had nothing to offer. I am saying
:>that because writing allows the accurate, permanent preservation and
:>accumulation of thought, cultures that write things down are, in that
:>regard, objectively superior to those that don't.

:Yes--IN THAT REGARD. Which is what I've been saying all along.
:Western culture has created greater achievements in *some* things,
:other cultures in others.

I've been saying that all along too, Ben, but where we differ is that I
deny that all cultural achievements are equal.

Now, it is up to you to decide whether the use of written language is a
more significant regard than the cultivation of the potato.

You've argued that Western culture AS A
:WHOLE is "objectively" superior to other cultures, to the extent that
:it should be the predominant object of academic study *due to its
:superiority.* This I don't agree with.

I have ?!?

Ben, use Netscape, or I will send you copies of any of my articles that
have expired at your site, and then you tell me where I have argued what
you say I have. At no time have I made this claim. How on earth would I
be in any position to make the myriad arguments that I do make if I were
ignorant, and were to advocate ignorance, of non-western culture?

I do say that Western culture is objectively superior to non-western
culture, and find it difficult to see how this could be denied without
denying the very notion of objective superiority. If you wish to do this,
consider the following thought experiment.

Imagine that in 1700 there existed on an undiscovered continent in the
Pacific a culture almost exactly like that monolithic behemoth, Western
civilization. They had texts two millenia old called the Republic,
Antigone, and Metamorphases, identical to those we have with those names.
They had fought a War of the Roses, a series of Crusades, and a handful of
Wars of Succession- at the exact same points in their history. They had
a Leaning Tower of Pisa (off which stones had apocryphally been dropped), a
Parthenon, and a Stonehenge. They spoke languages called (and just like
our) English, French, Greek, Basque, and so on, with histories and
geographies just like ours.

You get the idea; I won't go on with the details. It's the West's
Doppelganger- with a few minor exceptions. When our sailors met theirs
in the middle of the ocean, and exchanged explorers, it was discovered that
the West's Doppelganger had no Shakespeare, no Bach, and no Newton.

They did, however, have a writer (nicknamed the Bard) from Elizabethan times,
named Thomas Hardy, a Salieri, and an Edmund Halley.

Now, which is objectively superior, the West, or the Doppelganger West?

(snip)

:study both. With the West, it means we have to recognize the ugly

:parts, just like history books always make room to talk about Aztec
:human sacrifice and Africans selling other Africans into slavery.
:All of these things were true and should be noted as facts.

Funny, in my schooling, I learned that Americans went to Africa and
kidnapped slaves. It was only through my own reading that I learned that
some Africans had cooperated with the slave trade. And where I read of
Aztec human sacrifice, it was in the context of how it was timed in
accordance with their marvellously sophisticated calendar.

With
:non-Western cultures, it means recognizing the things that have not
:been included in the cultural canon due to racism.

Is racism the only conceivable reason for not giving equal time, or might
there be other, legitimate ones?

:Saul Bellow's response to this type of argument is: "When the Zulus

:have a Tolstoy, we will read him."

I believe he actually said he would read the Maori Proust, but the point
is the same. :)

:To which my answer, paraphrasing

:Ishmael Reed, is: Does Mr. Bellow speak Zulu?
:Did his college offer a Zulu literature course?

I don't speak Russian or French, but I can still read Tolstoy or Proust.
Now, if the Zulus or Maoris had a written language, and an extant tradition
of literature as rich as that of Russia or France, perhaps his college
would have offered one.

A few hundred years ago, few if any Europeans spoke Chinese or Sanskrit.
Today, you can study the Analects or the Upanishads at BU, and I assume
at other schools as well. The reason colleges don't offer Zulu or Maori
lit courses, but do offer those, is that Chinese and Indian literature
and culture are objectively superior to Zulu or Maori.

(snip)

:(I)t's quite possible that the Zulu

:Tolstoy expressed his or her art in a form that Bellow wouldn't
:recognize as being equivalent in depth and subtlety to the 1000-page
:novel (perhaps oral epic poetry set to music).

Where is your evidence that the Zulus have oral epic poetry "equivalent
in depth and subtlety" to Proust or Tolstoy? "It's quite possible" that
the Iroquois invented the bicycle, too, but I wouldn't make that claim
unless I had some good reason. I challenge you to provide some in support
of your "quite possible" claim.

The European scholars who first looked into the Sanskrit epics often
compared them quite favorably to Homer; I'll dig up quotes if you like.
Why would they then be so blind to similar greatness among the Maori or
Zulu? Perhaps because the Zulu Proust composed orally, those thick-headed
Europeans just refused to pay any attention? Then why the great attention
paid to Lord's studies of oral compositions in the Balkans?

:I'm not arguing that anyone should stop studying Tolstoy (Thomas

:Hardy, maybe :)), or that the first Zulu writer you come across should
:automatically be added to the canon. What I do argue is that the fact
:that the achievements of non-Western cultures *have* been
:suppressed--sometimes through racism, sometimes through failure to
:recognize them as accomplishments--means that we need to take a fresh
:look at what's out there, and also at what it is we are studying and
:why.

Bellow said (I think something like), produce the Maori Proust, and I will
read him. Sounds to me like he agrees with you- take that look you
advocate. Problem is, what happens when you look for the Maori Proust, and
you don't find him? It just can't be that there *is* no Maori Proust, so
it must be the fault of the racist Westerners who don't know how to look,
right?

:Martin Luther King drew on Gandhi for philosophical inspiration.

:Gandhi drew on the traditional pacifist principles of Hinduism and
:Jainism and on Thoreau. Thoreau drew on Enlightenment writings about
:liberty.

So far so good...

The Enlightenment philosophers drew on the model of Native
:American societies

Minus five.

and on the writings of ancient Greece. Thus,
:the philosophies all of these cultures have contributed in a positive
:way to our society. And if academia is the search for truth about
:significant things, then all of them deserve study, both of their
:strengths and weaknesses--truth deserves no less. So why should
:anyone argue that the Greek component of all of this is superior to
:the Hindu one?

Because the Greek component was enormously more important in the
development of Martin Luther King's thinking, as well as the rest of
society. The single greatest influence on King's thought, by a long, long,
shot, was not Hinduism. It was Christianity (which Nietzche nicely summed
as "Platonism for the masses"). Read any biography of King and tell me how
you can possibly conclude otherwise.

:Didn't mean to go that long--back to regularly scheduled swordplay. :)

No, that's the good stuff. :)

:>You say the lack of the invention of writing is a "major disadvantage" as
:>if it were imposed from above! No culture in this hemisphere used a
:>written language, while several in Europe, the Mideast, and Asia did. Why
:>are you so reluctant to give credit where it is due?
>
:You're reading too much into--well, *something* I said. I *never*
:implied that anyone had imposed lack of writing on Native Americans.
:And I do give credit to those cultures that developed literacy--its
:value in preserving knowledge is indisputable.

I know you didn't imply that anyone imposed lack of writing on anyone else,
but when I pointed out that Native Americans never invented writing, while
other cultures did, your response was something like, "I admit that's a
major disadvantage." You seem loathe to come out and admit that, if
anything at all is objectively superior to anything else, the institution
of writing is objectively superior to its lack.

:>[point which I really think I answered snipped]

I'm afraid I missed it. You said non-western cultures were "set back."
To set something back implies a notion of progress, usually towards some
end, which is frustrated. I don't think you explained what you meant by
"set back," because I'm not 100% clear on your use. See below.

(snip)

:My "set back by

:centuries" remark had to do largely with the economic aspects of
:colonization, which disrupted the systems by which people kept
:themselves fed and thus prevented literary and scientific achievements
:among colonized peoples, which is what we had started off talking
:about.

So it's economic systems you are talking about. To set a society back
by centuries would seem to indicate returning it to where it was a few
centuries ago, economically. Is this the correct reading of what you wrote?

Granted, the abolition of _sati_ has led to great literary and
:scientific achievement by Indian women--just like the end of Native
:American genocide opened the door for the literary achievements of
:Native Americans like N. Scott Momaday and Louise Erdrich.

I'm not so sure that the same women whose lives would have been lost to
_sati_ are the same ones who are achieving great literary and scientific
things, but let's not open that can of worms. ;)

:>(snip)

>
:>Can you find me an example or two from history in which this cooperative
:>model of exploration took place, and/or did yield significant cultural
:>advances? "We've seen its effects," you say. I maintain that some of them
:>were highly desirable, and that no actual culture, other than that which
:>produced the age of exploration, could have achieved them.

:Colonization has led to some positive effects, just like this country
:might never have become an economic power without slavery. That
:doesn't mean we can ignore the human costs of both, or posit a better
:model for the future.

No one is advocating that we ignore human costs. You, it seems to me,
are saying that we should agonize over and dwell upon them, while ignoring
any kind of historical context for them. It is this latter bit that led
me to term you "Whiggish."

:>>You appear to be positing that all

:>>the destruction [of colonialism] was justified because it was necessary
:to building the
:>>technological society we have today. We simply don't know that.

:>Not quite. I am saying that wringing one's hands and denouncing the West
:>is simplistic, myopic, and Whiggish.

:"Whiggish?" Better than Toryish, I suppose. :)

I don't mean "like the Whig political party," I mean "like the proponents
of the Whig theory of history."

:Let me make this perfectly clear: I am not out to "denounce the West."

:I believe we should set the record straight and accord credit and blame
:where they are due to all sides.

I hope you'll forgive me if I observe that your notions of where what is
due are somewhat out of kilter with reality. :)

(snip)

:>>Weatherford, incidentally, is a professor of anthropology at
:>>Macalester College in St. Paul. He's considered a popularizer, but
:>>I've never heard his scholarship questioned.
>
:>I'll do that. ;) I haven't spent a huge amount of time on him yet, but I've
:>already found one instance of his misrepresenting a source.

:Which D'Souza, of course, has never done. ;)

Perhaps, perhaps not; I don't know. I've never read anything in him that
seemed so utterly dubious that I felt the need to check up on him, and found
him guilty as charged. Have you?

(snip)

:>Don't know (D'Souza's) credentials off the top of my head, but they're not
:>relevant.

:Oh, aren't they? You were the one saying you'd rather see a surgeon
:than a "witch doctor." Wouldn't you give a bit more weight to an
:article on medicine written by an M.D. than one written by a P.R.
:flack for an insurance company? Or a homeopath? :)

Ben, please look back at what I wrote. I didn't say anything like "D'Souza
says such-and-such, so it's true." Rather, I said something like
"Historian Elisabeth Tooker (whose credentials, if anyone's, you should be
questioning) says such-and-such, so unless you can produce contrary
evidence, I submit that your claim has been discredited." Because I try to
be intellectually honest, in my account, I told where I got my information,
knowing full well that by citing a gadfly of the left, I'd likely have to
write a paragraph like the one I'm writing now.

Now, if a friend of mine who happened to be a homeopath suggested that I
put ice on my sprained ankle, and keep it elevated, I wouldn't worry too
much about his credentials. At the same time, when an MD gives me
unfamiliar medical advice, writes a new prescription, or suggests a
treatment I don't know about, I question him thoroughly until I understand
its basis. If he tells me to swallow lye for my upset stomach, I'll
probably say thanks, and find a new doctor.

Must I complete the analogy?

:>And while you and I can probably agree that a lot that comes from AEI is

:>out in right field, we would join together in attacking it, not by calling
:>it "right wing propaganda" but by critically examining the strength of its
:>arguments. I'm sure the Minnesota Law Review does more than say that the
:>quality of some judge's scholarship is hotly debated, now doesn't it?

:Credibility of the source is always an issue in evaluating statements,
:and knowledge is an aspect of credibility. I'd take the word of a
:scholar with a Ph.D. in a relevant field who has spent years studying
:Native American cultures over an ideological dilettante who decides to
:write a book criticizing multiculturalism, which becomes widely read
:due to the size of his P.R. budget.

It seems I must. I'm not into taking someone's word for it on anything,
if that word contradicts something I believe to be true. If it's about
something unimportant, I'll just let it go, believing myself to be right.
If it's about something that is important, on the other hand, figuring I'd
better find out, I'll look a little deeper into the issue. I hope this
general approach is not terribly controversial.

Weatherford may be very knowledgeable about Native American cultures. He
is not particularly knowledgeable about the ancient world, but alas,
believes he is. Furthermore, his scholarship is not entirely honest. Now,
I have no idea how much D'Souza knows about the Iroquois, but as I said,
that's not terribly important. Once again, at no time did I appeal to his
authority; I merely told you where I found out about Elisabeth Tooker's
study. I have since read Tooker, and found that D'Souza did in fact treat
her work fairly.

You're right that credibility is an issue in evaluating statements. I
suggest that you spend more time thinking about what are the issues in
evaluating *arguments*, on the other hand, and a little less on taking
people's word.

-Peter Keshavan

Peter McCorquodale

unread,

Aug 5, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/5/96

Ben Weiss writes:
:Credibility of the source is always an issue in evaluating statements,
:and knowledge is an aspect of credibility. I'd take the word of a
:scholar with a Ph.D. in a relevant field who has spent years studying
:Native American cultures over an ideological dilettante who decides to
:write a book criticizing multiculturalism, which becomes widely read
:due to the size of his P.R. budget.

He uses this argument to dismiss the claims made in the following article
cited by Dinesh D'Souza and Peter Keshavan:
Elisabeth Tooker, "The United States Constitution and the Iroquois

League," _Ethnohistory_ 35, No. 4 (Fall 1988), reprinted in James
Clifton, ed., _The Invented Indian_, Transaction Publishers, 1990.

The following book is presented as a superior authority on the subject:

_Indian Givers_ by Jack Weatherford (Fawcett/Ballantine, 1988)

OK, let's compare the credibility of Elisabeth Tooker and Jack Weatherford,
by looking for evidence of a Ph.D. in a relevant field and years studying
Native American cultures.

From the comfort of my desk, it took me a few minutes to find out the
following information about these two scholars.

Elisabeth Jane Tooker
---------------------
Ph.D., 1958 (Anthropology, Radcliffe College).
Thesis title: RITUAL, POWER AND THE SUPERNATURAL: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF
INDIAN RELIGIONS IN SOUTHWESTERN UNITED STATES

Titles of all books by this author in the library of Macalester College (where
Weatherford teaches):
An ethnography of the Huron Indians, 1615-1649.
Affluence and cultural survival /
Native North American spirituality of the eastern woodlands : sacred my
The Indians of the Northeast : a critical bibliography /
Lewis H. Morgan on Iroquois material culture /
The Iroquois ceremonial of midwinter.

Jack McIver Weatherford
-----------------------
Ph.D., 1977 (Cultural Anthropology, UCSD).
Thesis title: FAMILY CULTURE, BEHAVIOR, AND EMOTION IN A WORKING-CLASS GERMAN
TOWN.

Titles of all books by this author in the library of Macalester College (where
Weatherford teaches):
Tribes on the Hill /
Porn row /
Narcoticos en Bolivia y los Estados Unidos /
Cultural conditions for impoverishment of Las Madres Solteras in Lati
Indian givers : how the Indians of the Americas transformed the world
Native roots : how the Indians enriched America /
Savages and civilization : who will survive? /

acho...@jhu.edu

unread,

Aug 9, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/9/96

I have been reading this newsgroups for many months, and I have quietly
been watching over this particular discussion. As a first-time poster,
I'm preparing myself for flames as they come.

I acknowledge Western dominance and even think that in College Bowl, the
number of Western questions asked is fine because our 20th century
American culture is based much more heavily on European thought than say,
Indian thought.

But my question becomes, if European culture is "objectively superior",
why? Are all other people's of the world genetically inferior too? If
everyone in the world was striving for an "objectively superior" culture,
why would the Europeans win out so handily?

My contention is that each culture had its own social values. The basis
on Hinduism, for example, is that the material world is ephemeral and
distinct from the spiritual world. To gain unity with God, one must do
his/her life work (karma) for God with a good heart. In such a context,
why would the goal of Indians be to explore the world and make profound
scientific discoveries? Most Indian science revolved around the practical
aspects of life on earth: chemistry for pottery, astronomy for time
marking, medicine for day-to-day healing (see the _Ayurveda_).

Many North American natives felt a certain oneness with nature, and did
not want to do anything that would upset the balance. (This is in
contrast with the Biblical notion that the land and animals were given by
God for people to use.) The people in the Masai Mara in Kenya still live
only off of a mixture of meat, milk, and blood because in their minds,
this is what God wants them to do.

These peoples have their own traditions and cultures and stories, but they
don't really make for too many good College Bowl questions in 20th century
U.S. My basic point in writing this is to refute the term "objectively
superior". For example the Japanese thought THEY were superior in 1853
when Commodore Perry came. Perry had the bigger guns, but darn did those
sailors smell! :)

I believe each society has its own goals, and major scientific theorizing
and cultural dominance is not always included among them. "Superiority"
is a VERY offensive term to those considered inferior, and should be
avoided. Also the argument leads to many dangerous scenarios in the
modern world. "I'm only going to hire a white person for this job because
white people in America are 'objectively superior' to others."

I just had to throw in my thoughts.

-Atish Choudhury
Johns Hopkins College Bowl

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Aug 13, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/13/96

acho...@jhu.edu wrote:

: I have been reading this newsgroups for many months, and I have quietly

: been watching over this particular discussion. As a first-time poster,
: I'm preparing myself for flames as they come.

This may be a sensitive topic, but I think calm and rational discussion
of it is far more desirable than flames.

(snip)

: But my question becomes, if European culture is "objectively superior",
: why?

Historical accident. Just as it's a geological accident that the deepest
freshwater lake in the world is in Asia. But the fact that there is no
other reason that Lake Baikal is deeper than any other lake does not change
the fact that it really is deeper.

: Are all other people's of the world genetically inferior too?

I highly doubt it.

: If everyone in the world was striving for an "objectively superior"

: culture, why would the Europeans win out so handily?

It simply isn't true that everyone in the world was striving for the same
things, as you yourself observe. What different peoples did consider
important, and what resources, physical and cultural, they happened to have
at their disposal, goes a long way towards explaining how things turned out
historically.

: My contention is that each culture had its own social values. The basis

: on Hinduism, for example, is that the material world is ephemeral and
: distinct from the spiritual world. To gain unity with God, one must do
: his/her life work (karma) for God with a good heart. In such a context,
: why would the goal of Indians be to explore the world and make profound
: scientific discoveries?

You're exactly right- those probably would not be goals in such a society.

: Most Indian science revolved around the practical

: aspects of life on earth: chemistry for pottery, astronomy for time
: marking, medicine for day-to-day healing (see the _Ayurveda_).

OK, but who do you think understood the nature of matter better- all the
nineteenth century Indian potters put together, or Mendeleyev (sp)? I'll
grant you that Mendeleyev probably couldn't have built a decent pot, but
let's look at the big picture: Which is a bigger deal- constructing a pot,
or constructing the periodic table?

(Totally uncontroversial stuff snipped)

: My basic point in writing this is to refute the term "objectively

: superior". For example the Japanese thought THEY were superior in 1853
: when Commodore Perry came.

Most cultures think they're better than anyone else. That doesn't prevent
us from trying to look at things objectively, and it certainly doesn't
constitute a refutation of the notion of objectivity.

: Perry had the bigger guns, but darn did those sailors smell! :)

Perhaps we could infer that the personal hygiene practices of nineteenth
century American sailors were objectively not so great?

: I believe each society has its own goals, and major scientific theorizing

: and cultural dominance is not always included among them. "Superiority"
: is a VERY offensive term to those considered inferior, and should be
: avoided.

It seems to me that you are saying here that whatever could give offense
should be avoided; correct me if I'm wrong.

If fundamentalist Christians find the teaching of evolution offensive,
should that be avoided? Should Pat Buchanan be kept from speaking to the
media because so many find his ideas offensive? And if I find it VERY
offensive for someone to say that Tom Waters is a better quiz game player
than I am, should you avoid making that judgment?

: Also the argument leads to many dangerous scenarios in the

: modern world. "I'm only going to hire a white person for this job because
: white people in America are 'objectively superior' to others."

Of what argument are you speaking? Certainly none I've ever offered,
although the claims I've made might lead to scenarios that some might yet
find offensive. For instance a law firm might say "I'm going to hire only
a J.D. for this job, rather than someone trained in the Shariah." Would
you find such a judgment objectionable?

-Peter Keshavan

Joseph K Wright

unread,

Aug 13, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/13/96

In article <4uq6op$h...@news.bu.edu>, Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu> wrote:

>acho...@jhu.edu wrote:
>
>: But my question becomes, if European culture is "objectively superior",
>: why?
>
>Historical accident. Just as it's a geological accident that the deepest
>freshwater lake in the world is in Asia. But the fact that there is no
>other reason that Lake Baikal is deeper than any other lake does not change
>the fact that it really is deeper.

This appears to be a good analogy at first glance, but I think it falls
apart pretty quickly. Two people can check Lake Baikal and Lake Erie to
see which is deeper, and will agree that Baikal is. However, there is an
implicit assumption that this overlooks--that the concept "deep" or "depth"
is understood and agreed upon by both parties beforehand. The concept
"deep" means that there is a greater distance between the top and bottom
of something. OF course, this also implies we agree on concepts such as
"distance", "top", and "bottom", but in this example it is highly likely
that that will be the case.

Thus, Pete, I will agree with you that we can objectively measure the
superiority of one culture vs. another culture---if and only if we can
agree on a definition of "superiority" (and for that matter, a definition
of "culture", but that would be more easily resolved, I think). Thus we
CAN make an objective measurement, but ONLY after we have made a subjective
decision as to what we shall measure.

Thus I would argue that as soon as you and I (or you and Ben, or Ben and
I, or whoever) agree on a definition of superiority, we can objectively
decide whether or not Western culture is superior to all other cultures.
I don't expect this to happen in a year starting with "1" and ending with
A.D.

>: Most Indian science revolved around the practical
>: aspects of life on earth: chemistry for pottery, astronomy for time
>: marking, medicine for day-to-day healing (see the _Ayurveda_).
>
>OK, but who do you think understood the nature of matter better- all the
>nineteenth century Indian potters put together, or Mendeleyev (sp)? I'll
>grant you that Mendeleyev probably couldn't have built a decent pot, but
>let's look at the big picture: Which is a bigger deal- constructing a pot,
>or constructing the periodic table?

You have demonstrated that Mendeleyev objectively had a greater
understanding of nature than 19th-century potters (while admitting that
he probably had an objectively inferior understanding of pottery :)).

You have not demonstrated how this makes him objectively "superior" to
that same group of people.

(a lot of stuff I pretty much agree with snipped.)
>
>-Peter Keshavan

--
Joe Wright, Honors Coordinator, Pitt Office of Admissions and Financial Aid;
Quasi-co-coach, Pitt College Bowl; captain, HI! MY NAME IS BRAK!, at BOAT;
"I guess if I'm a little bit rock and roll, the rest of me is composed mostly
of water." -Donny Osmond on Space Ghost Coast to Coast

Peter Keshavan

unread,

Aug 18, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/18/96

Joseph K Wright (jkw...@pitt.edu) wrote:

(snip)

: Thus, Pete, I will agree with you that we can objectively measure the

: superiority of one culture vs. another culture---if and only if we can
: agree on a definition of "superiority" (and for that matter, a definition
: of "culture", but that would be more easily resolved, I think). Thus we
: CAN make an objective measurement, but ONLY after we have made a subjective
: decision as to what we shall measure.

And this point, I think, was explored well in the discussion between Ben
and myself. As I've said previously, it's up to you to decide whether
writing is superior to its lack, individual liberty to its lack, or modern
medical technology to its lack.

Make your decisions, and then measure.

(snip)

: You have demonstrated that Mendeleyev objectively had a greater

: understanding of nature than 19th-century potters (while admitting that
: he probably had an objectively inferior understanding of pottery :)).

: You have not demonstrated how this makes him objectively "superior" to
: that same group of people.

Well, I'm not trying to claim that *he* is or was objectively superior to
anyone else. For all I know, he was a total jerk. However, I was
responding to someone who seemed to say that since Indian potters practiced
"chemistry," the notion of superiority was without merit. I don't think
it's so.

Once again, it's up to you to decide whether it's a bigger deal to construct
the periodic table, or to make a really good pot. Decide, then we'll
measure.

It was interesting finally meeting Ben at PE, although I didn't know that
I had met him until after he had left the room, and I asked James Dinan who
that guy with Joe and Dwight was- after we'd run into the three of them
outside the Sheraton, and had them up to the Apostles 2000's room for a few
beers.

I'd completely missed it when, as our teams met on the street, Joe stepped
in between the two of us and put his arms up. :)

-Peter Keshavan

Ben Weiss

unread,

Aug 19, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/19/96

Here we go again...why does this only come up when I have 10,000
things to do at work?

On 18 Aug 1996 20:15:39 GMT,

Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
>Joseph K Wright (jkw...@pitt.edu) wrote:
>
>(snip)
>

>And this point, I think, was explored well in the discussion between Ben
>and myself. As I've said previously, it's up to you to decide whether
>writing is superior to its lack, individual liberty to its lack, or modern
>medical technology to its lack.

However, as I've pointed out, Western culture does not have a monopoly
or a patent on any of the above.

I haven't had a chance to do research on the medical stuff between
work and journal articles, but I did ask a medical student friend of
mine about non-Western medicine. She said that the AMA put out a
report--known as the Chantilly report--citing literally thousands of
non-standard medical practices that have been shown to work, mostly of
Chinese, Aryo-Vedic (Indian), and Native American derivation,
available from the Alternative Medicine Division of the AMA (yes,
there is one) for $27.00.

The specific example that three different people have given me is
Taxol, a drug taken from an Amazon rainforest plant that appears to be
the best hope of a cure for breast cancer. The local Native Americans
have been using it for centuries, but nobody asked them.

Also, if you ever have back trouble, you may want to go see an
osteopath (from experience, they're a lot better than chiropractors).
Osteopathy is a recognized medical specialty (osteopaths are fully
licensed M.D.'s), but it derives from Chinese pressure-point
techniques.
>
>(snip)

>
>It was interesting finally meeting Ben at PE, although I didn't know that
>I had met him until after he had left the room, and I asked James Dinan who
>that guy with Joe and Dwight was- after we'd run into the three of them
>outside the Sheraton, and had them up to the Apostles 2000's room for a few
>beers.
>
>I'd completely missed it when, as our teams met on the street, Joe stepped
>in between the two of us and put his arms up. :)
>

Same here. I knew who Peter was after somebody called him by name,
but I didn't get a chance to introduce myself. I figured that if he
didn't know who I was already (since I'd publicly been on Joe and
Dwight's team for a while), he'd figure it out from my first name and
the Minnesota references in the "great moments in AC" stories we were
swapping.

Weirdest moment of the tournament: Realizing that I'd just gone
9-0--my best game of the tournament--on Matt Colvin's packet.
Although I only got 20/30 on the Ntozake Shange bonus. :)
Ben

Pkeshavan

unread,

Aug 24, 1996, 3:00:00 AM8/24/96

Ben Weiss wrote:

:Here we go again...why does this only come up when I have 10,000

:things to do at work?

I too have a lot to do of late, and unfortunately, my internet access for
the immediately foreseeable future will be sporadic at best- hence
my resorting to AOL. :-/

:On 18 Aug 1996 20:15:39 GMT,

:Peter Keshavan <kesh...@bu.edu > wrote:
:>Joseph K Wright (jkw...@pitt.edu) wrote:

:>(snip)
:>And this point, I think, was explored well in the discussion between Ben

:>and myself. As I've said previously, it's up to you to decide whether
:>writing is superior to its lack, individual liberty to its lack, or
modern
:>medical technology to its lack.

:However, as I've pointed out, Western culture does not have a :monopoly
:or a patent on any of the above.

And my claims in no way depend on WC's having either.

:I haven't had a chance to do research on the medical stuff between

:work and journal articles, but I did ask a medical student friend of
:mine about non-Western medicine. She said that the AMA put out a
:report--known as the Chantilly report--citing literally thousands of
:non-standard medical practices that have been shown to work, :mostly of
:Chinese, Aryo-Vedic (Indian), and Native American derivation,
:available from the Alternative Medicine Division of the AMA (yes,
:there is one) for $27.00.

Ben, I have never said that no non-standard medical practice can
work, or that anything not invented by an individual of European
descent is of value.

:The specific example that three different people have given me is

:Taxol, a drug taken from an Amazon rainforest plant that appears to :be
:the best hope of a cure for breast cancer. The local Native :Americans
:have been using it for centuries, but nobody asked them.

One thing I have been saying all along is, look at the big picture.
Humans would not have developed science as they did except for
certain contingent historical idiosyncracies peculiar to the West.
Further, if you want to keep a human being in good physical health,
the ways to do that are best determined in the light of modern
science.

Nothing in that precludes South American Indians' using taxol for
centuries.

:Also, if you ever have back trouble, you may want to go see an

:osteopath (from experience, they're a lot better than chiropractors).
:Osteopathy is a recognized medical specialty (osteopaths are fully
:licensed M.D.'s), but it derives from Chinese pressure-point
:techniques.

The same is true here.

:>(snip)

:>It was interesting finally meeting Ben at PE, although I didn't know
:that
:>I had met him until after he had left the room, and I asked James :Dinan
who
:>that guy with Joe and Dwight was- after we'd run into the three of :them
:>outside the Sheraton, and had them up to the Apostles 2000's :room for a
few
:>beers.

:>I'd completely missed it when, as our teams met on the street, Joe
:stepped
:>in between the two of us and put his arms up. :)

:Same here. I knew who Peter was after somebody called him by :name,
:but I didn't get a chance to introduce myself. I figured that if he
:didn't know who I was already (since I'd publicly been on Joe and
:Dwight's team for a while), he'd figure it out from my first name and
:the Minnesota references in the "great moments in AC" stories we :were
swapping.

Keep in your mind, though, that I was not 100% in my own at the time. :)

-Peter Keshavan

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