Prisca Sapientia

[Total Science]

This post has nothing to do with "new insights" (the insights are thousands if not millions of years old).

And this post has nothing to do with "mad ideas" other than that all my posts automatically get moved here so I'm going to save the so-called "EU" moderators time and energy by just directly posting it here.

Also this subforum has more topics than the others and it is clearly the most popular and widely read (probably by virtue of the fact that EU is itself considered to be a "new insight and mad idea" and by virtue of this subforum containing the most truth).

http://oilismastery.blogspot.com/2009/1 ... isdom.html

"Monsieur Newton croit avoir decouvert assez clairement que les Anciens comme Pythagore, Platon, &c, avoient toutes les demonstrations qu'il donne du veritable Systeme du Monde...." -- Fatio de Duiller, polymath, February 5th 1691/2

"...the Egyptians...concealed mysteries that were above the common herd under the veil of religious rites and hieroglyphic symbols." -- Isaac Newton, mathematician, 1694

"...the Corpus Hermeticum -- Greek and Latin translations of supposedly ancient Egyptian concepts -- Newton regarded the stream of such writings as an expression of the prisca sapientia, as it was called in Renaissance times, i.e., the wisdom of the ancients." -- I.M. Oderberg, writer, 1986

"This question of measurement is only one example of Newton's faith in the prisca sapientia of Ancient Egypt. He was also convinced that atomic theory, heliocentricity and gravitation had been known there [See McGuire and Rattansi (1966, p. 110)]." -- Martin Bernal, historian, 1987

"There's a tradition of scholarship that was very popular in the Renaissance called the prisca sapientia, the primal wisdom. It claimed that there was a secret wisdom that was first transmitted by an archetypical figure—say, for example, Moses—and then passed down through a line of successors, usually including Pythagoras, Plato, and so forth, and that this wisdom was really the ultimate tool for understanding the universe. Newton clearly believed that." -- Bill Newman, historian, November 15th 2005

http://www.mathpages.com/HOME/kmath066.htm

It's ironic that most of the men who participated in the "scientific revolution", whose contributions seem (to us) so original and innovative, were themselves convinced that they were merely re-discovering the vast body of pristine knowledge (prisca sapientia) that had been possessed by the ancients, but somehow lost and forgotten during the centuries that came to be called the "dark ages" of western civilization. This was not an entirely unreasonable belief, because the great works, both material and intellectual, of the classical civilizations were (and to some extent still are) very imposing. The intellectual culture of Western Europe really did decline during the fall of Rome, and the institutions for preserving and passing along knowledge, as well as the inclination to do so, were severely diminished. Then, after so long an absence, when the ancient texts were re-discovered, the scholars of the Renasiance and later periods were acutely aware of their intellectual inferiority vis-a-vis "the ancients". Also, the fact that many of the ancient texts were now available only in fragmentary form, often in third-hand translations, and many of the references were to works totally unknown and presumably lost, contributed to the impression that the ancients had known far MORE, if we could only find it out.

This attitude toward the past is, in some ways, the exact opposite of our usual view today, which is of a totally ordered sequence of eras progressing from less knowledge in the past to more knowledge in the future. It's hard for us to imagine, today, the intellectual climate among people who believed (knew) they were scientifically and mathematically inferior to their ancestors in the distant past.

Well, it's not hard for me anyway. I recognize the ancients were centuries (if not millenia) more scientifically and technologically advanced than we are today.

[Plasmatic]

First question:

How did the ancients acquire this alleged knowledge in your model?

[StevenO]

Well, it's not hard for me anyway. I recognize the ancients were centuries (if not millenia) more scientifically and technologically advanced than we are today.

You are free to believe what you want, but science asks for testable statements. What testable results different than some vague mysticism do you have that would prove your recognition?

I know little about Old Egypt but I know that Greeks were familiar with static electricity, the fact that the earth was round and some pretty good math, mechanics and philosophy. However I do not consider that more advanced than last few centuries technology, especially not our combustion engine, electronic and space age. Fact is that Christianity has put Europe into the "dark ages" after the Roman period until the Renaissance and many insights had to be rediscovered.

[Total Science]

First question:

How did the ancients acquire this alleged knowledge in your model?

Through observation and experience.

"That all our knowledge begins with experience there can be no doubt." -- Immanuel Kant, physical scientist/philosopher, 1781

[Total Science]

You are free to believe what you want, but science asks for testable statements.

And you are free to live in a fantasy world of make believe and fairy tales.

"In physics as ordinarily set forth, there is much that is unverifiable: there are hypotheses as to (a) how things would appear to a spectator in a place where, as it happens, there is no spectator; (b) how things would appear to a spectator in a place when, in fact, they are not appearing to anyone; (c) things which never appear at all." -- Bertrand Russell, Our Knowledge of the External World, 1914

And how do you test history? With a time machine or with a crystal ball?

"As is well known in all sciences there have been many important events which have not left any trace." -- Hannes O.G. Alfvén, physicist, 1954

"Historical evidence is valuable precisely because it offers an even better key to the past than present-day analogues: eye-witness accounts." -- Rens Van Der Sluijs, author, August 2009

If we're going to exclude untestable statements then you have to throw out all of history and all observation beyond the heliosphere.

Science makes untestable statements on a daily basis.

Whether it should or not is another matter.

I probabaly agree with you that it should try to anyway.

What testable results different than some vague mysticism do you have that would prove your recognition?

History, experience, and contemporary observation and experiment.

I know little about Old Egypt but I know that Greeks were familiar with static electricity, the fact that the earth was round and some pretty good math, mechanics and philosophy. However I do not consider that more advanced than last few centuries technology, especially not our combustion engine, electronic and space age. Fact is that Christianity has put Europe into the "dark ages" after the Roman period until the Renaissance and many insights had to be rediscovered.

Alchemy had been known and practiced in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

"The Roman emperor Diocletian issued an edict in Egypt around A.D. 300, demanding that all books on 'the art of making gold and silver' be burned. The decree shows that the Roman government was certain that such an art existed. It would surely have been unnecessary to issue decrees banning this craft unless it were known to have been practiced." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

For centuries after, mainstream so-called scientists (with the exceptions of Newton and Leibniz) considered alchemy to be pseudoscience. Then in the late 19th century (Berthelot) and early 20th century (Rutherford), scientists finally realized they had been wrong all along and that alchemy is actually chemical science based upon the ancient discovery of atoms. Thousands of years after Democritus had transmuted elements, Rutherford was able to do the same.

"For many centuries scholars thought that chemical elements were stable and could not be transformed. This is why the alchemists were regarded as dreamers, charlatans, or idiots. But in the year 1919 the great English physicist Rutherford sided with the alchemists and transmuted nitrogen into oxygen and hydrogen by bombarding it with helium. That was the day of the vindication of the alchemical doctrine of transmutation." -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

"It is noteworthy that, according to ancient alchemy, gold was made from mercury or lead. In the periodic table of elements, the atomic number of gold is 79, that of mercury 80, and of lead 82 -- in other words they are neighbors. It was Mendeleyeff who in 1879 first formulated a table of the elements and arranged them in order of increasing weight according to their atomic structure. The question is -- had the alchemists discovered the table before Mendeleyeff?" -- Andrew Tomas, author, 1971

Thousands of years after Democritus had turned lead into gold, Seborg was able to do the same.

"Transmutation of lead into gold isn't just theoretically possible - it has been achieved!" -- Anne M. Helmenstine, chemist, May 2001