Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Feb 07, 2024 7:21 pm
You might wish that. And I understand if you do. You have obvious reasons to prefer that.
The only question is, is it true? If Whitehead is wrong, then what is the truth? It certainly isn't that secularism or one or another form of Atheism gave rise to science, or that polytheism did, or that science and faith are polar opposites. So, correct the story, if you can.
1) an attempt to shift the onus.
Prove that my speculation is wrong.
2) someone who new scientific methodology well would realize that so far you have some chronological correlation, not causation.
3) you can't eliminate polytheism, since ideas and attitudes from polytheism continued - inside the monotheism and around them - Certainly Ibn al-Haytham was influenced by the pagan (and potentially atheistic Greeks. Which leads to 4 below.
4) you have remotely - as one does in the scientific method - reduced variables. There were advances in communication and much more cross-cultural interactions, so ideas were cross-fertilizing. As experts in various cultures compared knowledge more and more, noticed techniques more and more that were developed in other cultures, this could well have led to an inevitable set of discoveries, whether monotheism developed or not. You first naively put forward Francis Bacon as the father of science. Well even a cursory look at the kind of information Bacon had access to that would have been impossible at earlier stages of human history gives support from advances in the global exchange of memes being the fertile ground that led privileged explorers to make connections and begin organizing the bases for scientific methodology. Hell, for all we know the monotheisms distaste for the empirical and the physical and valuation of the transcendent delayed the developments in science.
5) There was the rise of a literal middle class in many parts of the world - people with more free time and the means to explore their interests.
6) In Europe you had tremendous religious turmoil where different people, for example, said THIS IS THE REAL Christianity. Which may have left people room to consider other modes of gaining knowledge.
7) For Europe the priniting press in the 1400s, coupled everywhere with increase of translators.
Consequences of Empires. Human empires had been increasing - certainly around Ibn al-Haytham and Bacon, which leads to all sorts of transfer of ideas, ways of communicating, ways of thinking. IOW we need not have direct ideas: Ibn al-Haytham need not have read about optics, for example, to be influenced in his work in optics. He and Bacon and others would have been flooded by modes of thinking, METAPHORS, philosophical approaches from many cultures and these end up being tools in the mind. I capitalized metaphors because their use in the early stages of mental exploration along with the related concept of analogies. Thinking outside the box, is easier when you are able, as both these men were, to read about the boxes of other cultures and get a sense of the boxes of their own cultures thinking.
9) Sea travel (and even land travel) allowed for an even more diverse set of cultures and thinkers to influence each other. Not just around the mediterraenen say, but the China, the 'New World', etc also had ideas pouring into Europe and the MIddle East.
Critical Mass was reached, critical meme combinations reached the saturation point, necessary crosscultural knowledge level threshholds were crossed and people could see some of the assumptions and limits of the own culture's ideas. And science began to pop out.
The monotheisms certainly added more memes to the mix. Perhaps even some of them were very helpful. Perhaps, however, the attitudes of the various religious authorities caused problems for people thinking out of the box in general or focusing on nature. I don't know and I don't have a stance on that. But someone could easily make a case as good as yours that they would have slowed down progress. You wanna poorly speculate, well that't the door you open and need to accept.
And so on: humans of greater means, with more access to diverse thinkers is going to lead to discoveries including methodological ones.
Seriously, I have no idea where Harbal patience comes from. You're still up to your slimy little evasions and inablity to acknowlege and trying to shift onus onto others and smug little gibes.
Harbal is a saint for putting up with you.
You haven't demonstrated piss but it's his job to prove something. As if your idea, supported poorly as it is, should stand.
Speculation. Fine speculation is cool and useful - and the amount of speculation that Bacon and Ibn al-Haytham could look at was vastly more than smart humans of means before their times.
But you present your speculation as well justified conclusions and play your little mind games. Ecch!
