Writing about the Written

Word Roots Latin and Greek

2007-12-27T05:38:00.000-08:00

BASE	MEANING	ORIGIN
act	to act	Latin
acu, acr, ac	needle	Latin
alt	high	Latin
anima, anim	life, mind	Latin
ann, enn	year	Latin
anthrop	man	Greek
aqua	water	Latin
arch, archi	govern, rule	Greek
arm	army, weapon	Latin
arbitr, arbiter	to judge, consider	Latin
art	craft, skill	Latin
arthr, art	segment, joint	Greek
aud	to hear	Latin
bell	war	Latin
biblio, bibl	book	Greek
bio	life	Greek
capit, cipit	head	Latin
caus	cause, case, lawsuit	Latin
cede	to go, yield	Latin
cele	honor	Latin
cell	to rise, project	Latin
cent	one hundred	Latin
cept, capt, cip, cap, ceive, ceipt	to take, hold, grasp	Latin
cert	sure, to trust	Latin
cess, ced	to move, withdraw	Latin
cid, cis	to cut off, be breif, to kill	Latin
circ, circum	around	Latin
civ	citizen	Latin
claud	close, shut, block	Latin
clin	to lean, lie, bend	Latin
cog	to know	Latin
column	a column	Latin
comput	to compute	Latin
cont	to join, unite	Latin
cor, cord, cour, card	heart	Latin
corp	body	Latin
cosm	world, order, universe	Greek
crac, crat	rule, govern	Greek
cred	believe, trust	Latin
crit, cris	separate, discern, judge	Latin
culp	fault, blame	Latin
curs, curr, corr	to run	Latin
custom	one's own	Latin
dem	people	Greek
dent, odon	tooth	Latin
derm	skin	Greek
dic, dict	to say, to speak, assert	Latin
duct, duc	to lead, draw	Latin
dur	to harden, hold out	Latin
ego	I	Latin
ethn	nation	Greek
equ	equal, fair	Latin
fac, fic, fect, fact	to make, to do	Latin
famil	family	Latin
fen	to strike	Latin
fer	to carry, bear, bring	Latin
fid	trust, faith	Latin
fin	to end	Latin
flu	to flow	Latin
form	shape, form	Latin
fort	chance, luck, strong	Latin
frig	cool	Latin
fum	smoke, scent	Latin
gam	marriage	Greek
gen	race, family, kind	Latin
geo	earth	Greek
gno, kno	to know	Greek
grad, gred, gress	step, degree, rank	Latin
graph, gram	write, draw, describe, record	Greek
grat	pleasure, thankful, goodwill, joy	Latin
grav, griev, grief	heavy	Latin
gymn	naked	Greek
hab	to have, hold, dwell	Latin
hom	man, human	Latin
hosp	guest, host	Latin
host	enemy, stranger	Latin
hydro	water	Greek
hygiene	the art of health	Greek
hypno	sleep	Greek
init	to begin, enter upon	Latin
jur, jus, jud	law, right	Latin
juven	young	Latin
labor, lab	work	Latin
lat	lateral, side, wide	Latin
laud	praise	Latin
leg, lig	law, to chose, perceive, understand	Latin
lev	to make light, raise, lift	Latin
liber, liver	free	Latin
lingu, langu	tounge	Latin
lith	stone	Greek
loc	place	Latin
locu, loqu	word, speak	Latin
log	idea, word, speech, reason, study	Greek
luc, lum	light	Latin
man	hand	Latin
mar	sea	Latin
med, medi	middle	Latin
medic	physician, to heal	Latin
memor	mindful	Latin
men, min, mon	to think, remind, advise, warn	Latin
ment	mind	Latin
meter, metr	measure	Greek
migr	to move, travel	Latin
mim	copy, imitate	Greek
mit, mis	to send	Latin
mor	fool, manner, custom	Greek
morph	form	Greek
mort	death	Latin
mov, mob, mot	to move	Latin
mus	little mouse	Latin
mut	change, exchange	Latin
necess	unavoidable	Latin
neur, nerv	nerve	Greek
noc, nox	night, harm	Latin
nomen, nomin	name	Latin
null, nihil, nil	nothing, void	Latin
nym, onym, onom	name	Greek
opt	eye	Greek
ord, ordin	order	Latin
ortho	straight	Greek
par, pair	arrange, prepare, get ready, set	Latin
part, pars	portion, part	Latin
ped, pes	foot	Latin
pend, pond, pens	to weigh, pay, consider	Latin
phe, fa, fe	speak, spoken about	Greek
phil	love	Greek
phon	sound, voice	Greek
photo	light	Greek
pler	to fill	Latin
plic	to fold	Latin
plur, plus	more	Latin
pneu	breath	Greek
polis, polit	citizen, city, state	Greek
port	to carry	Latin
pos	to place, put	Latin
pot	powerfull	Latin
prim, prin	first	Latin
priv	seperate	Latin
prob	to prove, test	Latin
psych	mind, soul, spirit	Greek
pyr	fire	Greek
reg, rig, rect, reign	government, rule, right, straight	Latin
respond	to answer	Latin
rupt	break, burst	Latin
sacr, secr, sacer	sacred	Latin
sat	to please	Latin
sci	to know	Latin
scope	to see	Greek

Base	Meaning	Origin
scrib, script	to write	Latin
sed, sid, sess	to sit, to settle	Latin
sent, sens	to feel	Latin
sequ, secut	to follow, sequence	Latin
simil, simul, sembl	together, likeness, pretense	Latin
sol, soli	alone, lonely	Latin
solus	to comfort, to console	Latin
somn	sleep	Latin
son	sound	Latin
soph	wise	Greek
spec, spect, spic	to look at, behold	Latin
spond, spons	to pledge, promise	Latin
tac, tic	silent	Latin
techn	art, skill	Greek
temp	time	Latin
ten, tain, tent	to hold	Latin
tend, tens	to give heed, stretch toward	Latin
term	boundary, limit	Latin
test	to witness, affirm	Latin
the, them, thet	to place, put	Greek
theatr	to see, view	Greek
theo	god	Greek
topo	place	Greek
tract	to pull, draw	Latin
trib	to allot, give	Latin
vac	empty	Latin
ven	to come	Latin
ver	truth	Latin
vers, vert	to turn	Latin
vest	to adorn	Latin
vestig	to track	Latin
via	way, road	Latin
vir	manliness, worth	Latin
vis, vid	to see, to look	Latin
viv, vit	life	Latin
voc, vok	voice, call	Latin

The History of Artificial Intelligence from Ancient Era to Early Modernity

2007-12-25T16:54:00.000-08:00

Some rights reserved-see creative commons copyright license.

While in a cognitive science course pursuing my Bachelor of Science, I wrote the following synthesis paper on artificial intelligence in the works of Plato and Descartes among others. Years after writing the paper, the summation I made in its conclusion is probably more at home in my political philosophy than ever. The paper is published in its entirety below:

Computability and Cognition Fall 2002
Synthesis Paper
bibliography

I believe the suggested synthesis topic:

What are the foundations (if any) that each philosopher proposed for making judgements and how (if at all) do these judgements relate to truth (reality)?

has fertile ground for exploring questions about artificial intelligence.

Plato

Theaetetus 185 d-e, Plato contends information that arrives through the senses are unified by a central thing. This "thing" is given a management position ruling over the various sense modalities, and coordinating them into a unified representation. Once this distinction is made, at 186-d, Socrates says

Then knowledge is to be found not in the experiences, but in the reasoning about them; it is here, seemingly, not in the experiences, that it is possible to grasp meaning and truth.

Although at the last of Theaetetus Socrates deems all of the answers they had postulated are wind-eggs (Theae 210-b), and all that had been gained was knowing that these were not the answers. I will take an unconfirmable position that 185d-e is more Plato's philosophy than Socrates, and 210-b is more Socrates' humble and healthy skepticism. With that, I want to hang onto the quote from Theaetetus 186-d as a fundamental Platonism.

Rene Descartes

This central manager of all sensory modalities in Theaetetus 185-d is given a higher position in Descartes "Discourse on Method". By higher position, I may mean more independent of such mundane tasks as depending on material existence. It is this central and unifying point that is Descartes only sure thing (well then God immediatelly after being sure of I), the "I" that is managing or simply doubting all.

Descartes does go on to deal with what is outside of himself. In "Meditation Three, Concerning God, That He Exists" the other things external to Descartes' "I" are considered. External both as in other substances and entities that are contemporary with Descartes' "I", and also the causality of his "I".

Corporeal things are given an origin, and that is from the "I";

Section 43
As to the ideas of corporeal things, there is nothing in them that is so great that it seems incapable of having originated from me.

Corporeal things external to him are assigned their only sure cause, the "I", Descartes moves on to find the cause or origin of the "I". Descartes deals with many possibilities, and makes many interesting disqualifications. I see an implied evolution in Section 48.

...(these items of knowledge being merely accidents of that substance).

He also entertains eternal existence in Section 49. He even muses briefly that, (egads!), this immaterial "I" may have been the product of...parents(!), in Section 49 first of paragraph.

But perhaps this being is not God, and I have been produced either by my parents or by some other causes less perfect than God.

he enumerates over many disqualifications and compares that disqualification to the stronger evidence that God is the surest candidate for the cause of the "I".

In Meditation 4, Paragaph 2; Descartes says

To begin with, I acknowledge, that it is impossible for God ever to deceive me, for trickery or deception is always indicative of some imperfection.

Finally Descarte mentions a more holistic and relational universe full of many things. Meditation 4 Sect 56.

And although subsequent to having decided to doubt everything, I have come to know with certainty only that I and God exist, nevertheless, after having taken note of the immense power of God, I cannot deny that many other things have been made by him, or at least could have been made by him. Thus I may have the status of a part in the universal scheme of things.

Wow, finally Descartes hangs out with the rest of us.

I feel that Descartes takes the "thing", the sense modality unifier or knowledge center, that appeared in Theaetetus 186-d and gives it a more forceful existence and also provides a method to build a universe around it. I feel that Descartes is the first post-Greco philosopher that developes platonism to another level. So I am playing double duty by commenting on both Plato and Descartes. I think that they relate to truth, but maybe not reality. I feel they construct a framework in which truth can happen in that game, in that formal process. There are moments when Descartes simply sets the game board up; disallowing the consciousness "I" from being born of parents, or accidently occurring from mere substance, and that something perfect cannot deceive. Descartes does us a service in where he takes the story from there, but that is a very arbitrary starting point. It determines the ending point.

David Hume

The metaphysical "I" given defacto supremecy in Plato and Descartes gets no starring role in the works of Hume. Hume divests the heavens of these eternal forms, places the Forms in books on speculation, and sets fire to them. Let's look at the "I" be death marched from heaven to the page and finally to a funeral pyre.

Section 5 Part 1 page 87
Nothing is more usual than for writers , even, on moral. political, or physical subjects, to distinguish between reason and experience....
....But notwithstanding that this distinction be thus universally received, both in active and speculative scenes of life, I shall not scruple to pronounce, that it is, at bottom, erroneous, at least, superficial.

Hume is not planning on existing in the orbs with the Forms any time soon with this insulting statement. He dares to slander the reputation of so many while simulataneously not writing as well as they did, an interesting tactic in itself.

I have often been amazed at how language is this thing that can be so far removed in time and space from the referent. This is a really a cool thing that allows us to talk about Old John the Farmer long after anything he ever did is still laying around the farm. The meme people love this, how the Old John the Farmer meme is going to live on like those bacteria strains that arrived on meteors, sometimes really dormant but always ready to re-invigorate when an Old John the Farmer joke is needed. But I have just revealed that Old John the Farmer is a platonic form. I start my joke with with "...there was this Old John the Farmer" and everyone has the heaven given image. But wait. Old John the Farmer jokes are not going to told on the Space Colony ship in 2080, because no one will know people named John, that are allowed to grow old, and that farm. Hume will be there at the Space Colony policing all Old John the Farmer jokes with this statement:

Section 5 Part 1,page 89
But here it may be proper to remark, that though our conclusions from experience carry us beyond our memory and senses, and assure us of matters of fact which happened in the most distant places and most remote ages....you must at last terminate in some fact, which is present to your memory or senses ; or must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation... ...What , then, is the conclusion of the whole matter? A simple one...All belief of matter of fact or real existence is derived merely from some object, present to the memory or senses., and a customary conjunction between that and some other object.

Well, I think Hume said this. A plethora of book stores stock these books with his name on them. My college has a course in which they claim this book was penned by him. Oh, the book I bought, THAT object, allows me the foundation to lay claim that Hume existed and wrote non-flammable philosophy books. If it had been an Oracle of Delphi that had uttered the above paragraph in my presence I would have been wondering if the Delphinians were going the way of the paradoxical lying Cretans. Luckily I have this used book I bought to have read it out of.

Seriously, Hume is my least understood philosopher. I will admit that. I will speak now about all the philosophers on the list above in relation to Hume's sensory perception method of judgement. One philosopher, Ludwig von Bertalanffy, contends that any organism that keeps regular intervals of lifespan has an accurate representation of reality. Survival is the truth test. Platonism seems to be powerful example of a mind thinking, but not of a whole body surviving. It is too ready to not need terrestrial or corporeal existence. Hume is wanting the object in hand, the body to be here to be counted, and he has the trait of not assuming the future is going to be like the past. Hume's lack of faith in knowing the future is an awesome trait for survival. One could take it to a level of numbing insanity if you assumed the sky could rain hot pokers any second, but I think Hume always is perceiving enough objects in his surroundings to know the hot pokers are not currently a danger. (There, I wrote a sentence as long as Hume's.)

Immanuel Kant

While Hume seems to read like a complete disallow of Platonism, Kant manages to resurrect a discussion of the consciousness that unifies or manages various modalities.

Second Part Section 22, paragragh 305:
The sum of the matter is this: the business of the senses is to intuit, that of the understanding to think. But thinking is uniting representations in a consciousness.... The uniting of representations in a concsiousness is judgement. Thinking therefore is the same as judging, or referring representations to judgements in general.... This uniting in consciousness is either analytic by identitiy, or synthetic by combination and addition of various representations one to another.

Kant proceeds in Section 23 to accept a priori rules as principles of possible experience.

The concepts grounded thereupon, which contain the a priori conditions of all synthetic and necessary judgements, accordingly constitute a transcendental system. Finally, the principles by means of which all appearances are subsumed under these concepts constitute a physiological system, that is, a system of nature, which precedes all empirical cognition of nature, first makes it possible, and hence may in strictness be called the universal and pure natural science.

Kant here introduced the dangerous things that do not exist in space and time. He later saves this from corporeal independence and lack of empirical contingency.

Section 30, paragraph 313
Hence if the pure concepts of the understanding try to go beyond objects of experience and referred to in themselves, they have no meaning whatever.

Kant goes on to explore how seductive pure a priori concepts are for use that transcends all possible experience. He disallows this disembodied transcendence with statements such as:

Second Part Section 34
For our understanding is not a faculty of intuition but a connection of given intuitions in an experience. Experience must therefore contain all the objects[Hume's objects] for our concepts...

Lance Miller

This seems to me reasonable enough. Kant has not thrown away pure reason with the bath water like Hume had. As I had contended regarding formalism, the games of pure reason do happen, but pure reason arose out of corporeal utility by a corporeal entity. Our platonic forms are ideas begotten by a small subset of organisms on this planet, and allow us to represent our experience.

Kant draws a nice class war truce by making platonic forms the elected leaders that serve empiricism, instead of the diety-like despotic power that platonic forms had in antiquity and the middle ages. I am still unsure of Kant's correspondence to reality. It seems the forbiddance of a priori for purely transcendental musings is a weak law. It is like trusting the former despot with police powers in a post despotic state. We can always claim, "look here, this language construct, it is here with us, not in corporeal existence, but in our dialogue. It still exists, and seems to have existed for all time." Actually I am just playing a language game now. We can find security in showing that formalism was begotten by corporeal organisms, for corporeal needs. This strips it of a noble origin, and theories of origin are the key to regulating the power of transcendental thought. I am using political terminology, but I am not being entirely metaphorical. I think the epistemology of the platonic forms begat the political economy and religions of the western and middle eastern world for over a 1500 years. I think Hume and Kant are trying to cage (or burn) the abuses of pure reason. Unfettered transcendental speculation, combined with queer local religious customs, led to an amazing cosmology that seemed to be unaccountable to the sense perception that tells a human they are being a slave to another human's every whim or that they are performing acts that are incongruent. But maybe put in less emotional language, the subjects of this political enterprise forgot that formalism happened in service to simple utility for the organism(s) using it.

Addendum

The first week of our class we saw a film that presented the caveats in the question "what is an expert". When we read and discussed Meno I felt we were doing a good job of pursuing the question. I don't have an epiphany on the subject to offer the world. Far from it. I would like to take an entirely negative stance, not against the prospect of classical AI being successful, but in regards to the arete of humans. The enumerations of expertise in humans. The nobility of our species. I am not disqualifying arete in individuals, I am saying the social aggregates of humans seem to want devices that ensure no arete occurs. The way in which a market economy invests in the more certain return, not the more innovative solution. The way a totalitarian regime tries to exterminate sectarian cultural or political expression. Our management styles of the last 100 years are excellent arete eliminators. So when a machine finally passes the Turing Test, I will be assuming we have successfully eliminated originality of character in humans, and built a computer that is mildly more powerful in computation than today. I am also saying that a deterministic machine would do a better job than we are at providing a political stasis that has less misery. We are already flunking at the expert status qualification, so why not go for the more sure method of stasis, a machine produced social stasis.

-Lance Miller
12-17-2002

References

Plato.Protagoras and Meno.Trans. W.K.C. Guthrie.
England: Penguin Books, 1956
Plato.Theaeteus.Trans. M.J. Levett.
Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co, 1992.
René Descartes.Discourse on Method/Meditations on First Philosophy.Trans.Donald A. Cress.
Indiana: Hackett Publishing Co, 1998.
David Hume.An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.
Illinois: Open Court, 1988
Immanual Kant.Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.Trans. James W. Ellington.
Indianapolis/Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co, 1977

General System Theory -by Ludwig von Bertallanfy

2007-12-24T18:15:00.000-08:00

page 240

It seems to be the most serious shortcoming of classic occidental philosophy, from Plato to Descartes and Kant, to consider man primarily as a spectator, as ens cogitans, while, for biological reasons, he has essentially to be a performer, an ens agens in the world he is thrown in.

...It is a prepostorous anthropomorphism to assume that the human forms of experience are the only possible ones, valid for any rational being. On the other hand, the conception of the forms of experience as adaptive apparatus, proved in millions of years of struggle for existence, guarantees that there is a sufficient correspondence between "appearance" and "reality". Any stimulus is experienced not as it is but as the organism reacts to it, and thus the world-picture is determined by psychophysical organization. Howere, where a paramecium reacts with its phobotactic reaction, the human observer, though his world outlook is quite different, also actually finds an obstacle when he uses his microscope. Similiarly, it is well possible to indicate which traces of experience correspond to reality, and which, comparable to the colored fringes in the field of a microscope which is not achromatically corrected, do not. So Pilate's question, "What is Truth?," is to be answered thus: Already the fact that animals and human beings are still in existence, proves that their forms of experience correspond, to some degree, with reality.

page 242

....Coming now to the world of science, Uexküll's conception of the physical universe as but one of the innumerable biological ambients, is incorrect or at least incomplete. Here a most remarkable trend comes in which may be called the progressivede-anthropomorphization of science(von Bertalanffy,1937,1953). It appears in three major lines.

It is an essential characteristic of science that it progressively de-anthrpomorphizes, that is, progressively eliminates those traits which are due to specific human experience. Physics necessarily starts with the sensory experience of the eye, the ear, the thermal sense,etc., and thus builds up fields like optics, acoustics, theory of heat, which correspond to the realms of sesory experience . Soon, however, these fields fuse into such that do not have any more relation to the "visualizable" or "intuitable": Optics and electricity fuse into electromagnetic theory, mechanics and theory of heat into statistical thermodynamics, etc.

This evolution is connected with the invention of artificial sense organs and the replacement of the human observer by the recording instrument. Physics, though starting with everyday experience, soon transgresses it by expanding the universe of experience through artificial sense organs. Thus, for example, instead of seeing only visible light with a wavelength between 380 and 760 millimicra, the whole range of electromagnetic radiation, from shortest cosmic rays up to radio waves of some kilometers wave length, is dislosed.

Thus it is one function of science to expand the observable. It is to emphasized that , in contrast to a mechanistic view, we do not enter another metaphysical realm with this expansion. Rather the things surrounding us in everyday experience, the cells seen in a microscope, the large molecules observed by the electron microscope, and the elementary particles "seen," in a still more indirect way, by their traces in a Wilson chamber, are not of a different degree of reality. It is a mechanistic superstition to believe that atoms and molecules (speaking with Alice and Wonderland of Physics) are "realer" than apples, stones and tables. The ultimate particles of physics are not a metaphysical reality behind observation; they are an expenasion of what we observe with our natural senses, by way of introducing suitable artificial organs.

In any way, however, this leads to an elimination of the limitationsof experience as imposed by the specifically human psychophysical organization, and , in this sense, to be the de-anthropomorphization of the world picture.

A second aspect of this development is what is called the convergence of research(cf. Bavink, 1949). The constants of physics have often been considered as only conventional means for the most economic description of nature. The progress of research, however, shows a different picture. First, natural constants such as the mechanical equivalent of heat or the charge of electrons vary widely in the observation of individual observers. Then, with the refinement of techniques, a "true" value is approached asymptotically so that consecutive determinations alter the established value only in progressively smaller digits of decimals. Not only this: Physical constants such as Loschmidt's number and its like are established not by one method but perhaps by 20 methods which are completely independent of each other. In this way, they cannot be conceived as being simply conventions for describing phenomena economically; they represent certain aspects of reality, independent of biological, theoretical or cultural basis. It is indeed one of the most important occupations of natural science thus to verify its findings in mutually independent ways.

However, perhaps the most impressive aspect of progressive de-anthropomorphization is the third. First, the so-called secondary qualities go, that is, color, sound, smell, taste disappear from the physical world picture since they are determined by so-called specific energy of the diverse and specially human senses. So, in the world picture of classical physics, only the primary qualities such as mass, impenetrability, extension, etc., are left which, psychophysically, are characterized as being the common ground of visual, tactual, acoustical experience. Then, however, these forms of intuition and categories also are eliminated as being all-too-human. Even Euclidean space and Newtonian time of classical physics, as was noted previously, are not identical with the space and time of direct experience; they lready re constructs of physics. This, of course, is true even more of the theoretical structures of modern physics.

Thus, what is specific of our human experience is progressively eliminated. What eventually remains is only a system of mathematical relations.

Some time ago it was considered a grave objection against the theory of relativity and quatum theory that it became increasingly "unvisualizable," that its contructs cannot be represented by imaginable models. In truth, however, this is a proof that the system of physics detaches itself from the bondage of our specifically human sensory experience; a pledge that the system of physics in its consummate form -leaving it undecided whether this is attained or even is attainable at all -does not belong to the human ambient(umwelt in Uexküll's sense) any more but is universally committal.

In a way, progressive de-anthropothization is like Muenchhausen pulling himself out of the quagmire on his own pigtail. It is, however, possible because of a unique property of symbolism. A symbolic system, an algorithm, such as that of mathematical physics, wins a life of its own as it were. It becomes a thinking machine, and once the proper instructions are fed in, the machine runs by itself, yielding unexpected results that surpass the initial amount of facts and given rules, and are thus unforeseeable by the limited intellect who originally has created the machine. In this sense, the mechanical chess player can outplay its maker (Ashby,1952), i.e., the results of the automatized symbolism transcend the original input of facts and intructions. This is the case in any algorythmic predication, be it a formal deduction on any level of mathematical difficulty or a physical prediction like that of still unknown chemical elements or planets(cf, von Bertalanffy,1956). Progressive de-anthropomorphization, that is, replacement of direct experience by a self-running algorithmic system, is one aspect of this state of affairs.

page 245

...If, in the sense just indicated, the system of physics in its ideal state, which can be approached only asymptotically, is absolute, we must, however, not forget another and in some way antithetical aspect. What traits of reality we grasp in our theoretical system is arbitratry in the epistemological sense, and determined by biological, cultural, and probably linguistic factors.

page 246

...Our main concern, probably determined by the grammer of Indo-European language, is with measurable qualities, isolable units, ad the like. Our physics neglects the so-called primary qualities; they come in only rudimentarily in the system of physics or in certain abstractions of physiologigical optics like the color cycle or triangle. Similarly, our way of thinking is conspiciously unfit for dealing witth problems of wholeness and form. Therefore, it is only with the greatest effort that holistic as contrasted to elementalistic traits can be included -although they are no less "real". The way of thinking of occidental physics leaves us on the spot if we are confronted with problems of form -hence this aspect, predominant in things biological, is but a tremendous embarrassment to physics.

...The Aristotelian logic, for millenia considered as giving the general and supreme laws of reasoning, actually covers only the extremely small field of subject-predicate relations. The all-or-none concepts of traditional logic fallshort of continuity concepts basic for mathematical analysis (cf. von Neumann,1951,p.16). Probably it is only a very small field of possible deductive reasoning which is axiomatized even by the efforts of modern logicians.

page 248

All our knowledge, even de-anthrpomorphized, only mirrors certain aspects of reality. if what has been said is true, reality is what Nicholas of Cusa (cf. von Bertalanffy, 1928) called the coincidentia oppositorum. Discoursive thinking always represents only one aspect of ultimate reality, called God in Cusa's terminology; it can never exhaust its infinite manifoldness. Hence ultimate reality is a unity of opposites; any statement holds from a certain viewpoint only, has only relative validity, and must be supplemented by antithetic statements from opposite points of view.

Thus, the catagories of our experience and thinking appear to be determined by biological as well as cultural factors. Secondly, this human bondage is stripped by a process of progressive de-anthrpomorphization of our world picture. Thirdly, even though de-anthropomorphized, knowledge only mirrors certain aspects or facets of reality. However, fourthly, ex omnibus partibus relucet totum, again to use Cusa's expression: Each such aspect has, though only relative, truth. This, it seems, indicates the limitation as well as the dignity of human knowledge.

1421 The Year China Discovered America -by Gavin Menzies

2007-12-24T18:09:00.000-08:00

Key people

Emporer Zhu Di -2nd in Ming Dynasty and initiated the grandiose intellectual and exploratory agenda. Built the Forbidden City. Relocated the capital from Nanking to Beijing. Conceived and initiated the Yong-Le-Dadian, the largest scholarly enterprise ever undertaken in history which resulted in an encyclopedia of four thousand volumes. (Compare: Henry V had 6 handwritten books).
Admiral Zheng He -Top court eunich. Moslem. Taken prisoner in the sacking of Mongolian stronghold Kun Ming, in which all adults were killed and boys not in puberty were castrated. Original name Ma He.

The Chinese Fleet

250 "Treasure" Ships -480 feet long , 180 feet wide, made of teak with silk sails.
1350 Patrol Ships
1350 Combat Vessels
400 War Ships
400 Freighters -for transporting grain, water and horses.
30,000 men went on the expedition of 1421

Compare with Europe. Henry the V invaded France in 1421 by transporting his troops across the Channel with four fishing boats, carrying 100 soldiers on each crossing, and could only sail in daylight hours.

Food and Drink

Staples:
- Soya beans -the soya bean sprouts were good for ascorbic acid.
- Wheat
- Millet
- Rice -brown and the husk has Vitamin B1 which prevents beri-beri.
- Carried by specialized grain ships.
Citrus for prevention of scurvy
- Limes
- Lemons
- Oranges
- Pomelos
- 3 month supply for each man
Meat
- Frogs
- Dogs
- Fish -caught by trained otters working in pairs to herd shoals into nets.
Drink
- green oolong tea
- red tea
- rice wine
- fresh water was carried in huge tanks -replenished at rivers
- desalinated sea-water was also available via a technology unique to China.

Compare this to Magellan's trip a century later -"We ate only old biscuits turned to powder, all full of worms and stinking of the urine the rats had made on it". And scurvy was a mainstay of European ocean going centuries beyond when the Chinese had acheived prevention by gardening fresh produce onboard their ships.

The concubines on the treasure ships

Recruited from the floating brothels of Canton
"Tanka" ethnic group -descendents of emigrants from remote interior China who settled on the coast for pearl fishing.
Spoke a peculiar dialect.
Refused to have their feet bound. (you go girl!)
They attended the sumptuous banquets on ship, taught to hold their drink, and consumed huge amounts of wine, liqueurs and brandy.
Were well educated, expected to play cards and chess, and participate in theater performances.
Most were Buddhists.

Why did it end? Why did the Chinese navy cease to exist before the 1420's were over?

The navy was designed for trade and and intellectual discovery of the world outside of China. The Mandarin class, the educated bureaucrats in charge of economic management, were Confucian. Confucianism esteems farmers as the bedrock of society. Merchants, and trade, were perceived as antagonistic to the interests of the farmers and to stability and harmony in society. Trade and intellectual discovery of the world at large introduces change, flux, and a lack of harmony.

When the great fire of 1421 ruined the newly built Forbidden City, the Emperor fell on the hardest of times. His grandiose schemes of world exploration, intellectual discovery, and the like all became dirty words in Chinese view. The Mandarins and Confucianism took control of the government with a vengeance. The next two Emperors would dismantle the navy, forbid ocean sailing, destroyed almost all of the records of the 1421 expedition, and relocated the coastline dwelling population to 30 miles away from shore to enforce the inward isolationism even more.

The Chinese were centuries ahead of Europeans in every aspect of ocean travel. A certain opposite structure of Chinese as compared to European Middle Ages society would be the determining factor in how history unfolded from 1421 to the present. China was centrally controlled, it was one country with one Emperor. A decree, such as "burn all the records and dismantle the navy", is carried out thoroughly and quickly over the whole land. Europe is to this day plagued by tiny diverse nations with opposing social agendas. A decree by one idiotic or mad ruler does not carry force thoughout the whole land. For all of it's technological and social backwardness, Europe won the mantle of world exploration (and unfortunatley exploitation) not by superiority in any area but by the strange but powerful results of political diversity.

Systems of Survival by Jane Jacobs

2007-12-24T18:01:00.000-08:00

The Commercial Moral Syndrome

Shun Force
Come to voluntary agreements
Be honest
Collaborate easily with strangers and aliens
Compete
Respect contracts
Use initiative and enterprise
Be open to inventiveness and novelty
Be efficient
Promote comfort and convenience
Dissent for the sake of the task
Invest for productive purposes
Be industrious
Be thrifty
Be optimistic

The Guardian Moral Syndrome

Shun trading
Exert prowess
Be obedient and disciplined
Adhere to tradition
Respect hierarchy
Be loyal
Take vengeance
Deceive for the sake of the task
Make rich use of leisure
Be onstentatious
Dispense largesse
Be exclusive
Show fortitude
Be fatalistic
Treasure honor

Jacobs, J. 1992. Systems of Survival. New York New York. Random House.