--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Structural Modeling" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to structural-mode...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/structural-modeling/e0ace776-f5d0-7868-551c-6c3622ce2ca1%40att.net.
Jon A,
Those three criteria (copied below) are Plato's. Aristotle's father was a physician, and he trained his son for the first 18 years. Aristotle admitted that Plato's mathematical forms are perfect, but he recognized the need to value and deal with the facts of life and the world. Aristotle's writings on biology are more voluminous than his writings on philosophy.
Philo Judaeus of Alexandria was an early neoplatonist, who wrote many volumes to reconcile the Torah with Greek philosophy. Until the 13th century, most philosophers and theologians were neoplatonists, who accepted as much of Aristotle's writings as they could force into a Platonic framework.
But the rediscovery of Aristotle and the commentaries by Averroes (Ibn Rushd), originally from Arabic translations and later from the original Greek, revolutionized theology (Aquinas) as well as science (Roger Bacon). Until 1270, bell ringers depended on sun dials and hour glasses. But by 1300, every town in Europe of any size had a church with a clock that automatically rang the bells.
Aristotle made imperfections safe for philosophy, science, and engineering. With his three universes, Peirce reconciled Plato (mathematics) and Aristotle (actuality). Mathematics includes the universe of possibilities (all hypotheses) and necessities (all theorems provable from the hypotheses). The laws of science are mathematical theorems whose hypotheses have been tested to a high level of confidence.
John
______________________
JA> According to John Dewey, it is because of the human quest for perfect certainty that philosophy has inherited three problematic viewpoints: <QUOTE> the first, that certainty, security, can be found only in the fixed and unchanging; the second, that knowledge is the only road to that which is intrinsically stable and certain; the third, that practical activity is an inferior sort of thing, necessary simply because of man’s animal nature and the necessity for winning subsistence from the environment. </QUOTE> — John Dewey • The Quest for Certainty
David,
JFS> Until 1270, bell ringers depended on sun dials and hour glasses. But by 1300, every town in Europe of any size had a church with a clock that automatically rang the bells.DP> Do you have a reference for that?
I recommend a rather short book (245 pp.): Crosby, Alfred W. (1997) The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society, 1250-1600, Cambridge University Press.
Following are two reviews of the book:
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1997-01-26-bk-22112-story.html
https://www.stolaf.edu/other/ql/crosby.html
There is, of course, much more to be said about all these issues. Quantification alone would not be sufficient for the great advances that took place during those centuries, but without quantification the advances in science would not have been possible. The great universities that were established in the 12th c and the printing press in the 15th c were also essential.
John
On Jun 8, 2020, at 10:06 AM, John F. Sowa <so...@bestweb.net> wrote:
--
All contributions to this forum are covered by an open-source license.
For information about the wiki, the license, and how to subscribe or
unsubscribe to the forum, see http://ontologforum.org/info/
---
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ontolog-forum" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ontolog-foru...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ontolog-forum/9a90998b52e72c69783293c417771fba.squirrel%40webmail2.bestweb.net.
<untitled-[2].html>