purple colour.

re-pete-a

Hi all , just been reading the the book, LUCRETIUS, ON THE NATURE OF THINGS. 100- 50 BC. There's mention of the colour purple, QUOTE:"The Orient's richest robes and gleaming silks of Meliboean purple, Dyed with the hues of shells of Thessaly ". A book translated by Sir Ronald Melville, Printed by Oxford World's Classics. 1999.

It was said by some here that that colour wasnt invented till much later, it's posted here for the record that it was around, BC, how much before ??

It's also mentioned that India as well as the Orient were traded with.

Atoms , were understood to exist, by postulation and observation . So too were sound waves. Interesting!

The four fundamental elements ,fire, air , water, earth as the basic building blocks has been rebuked , and Atoms with spaces between has been raised.

Interfering religous beliefs are blamed for the confusions amongst the scholars and the populace

There sure seems like a pendulum effect in the history of the species.
 

memries

One of my favorite colors Re-pete-a.

Yes I just read somewhere that you read history to go forward. Oh yes, reading The Last Lion by William Manchester about Winston Churchhill so I guess he said it. He lived liked he was in the past or from the past. Always odd man out in the way he thought.

So yes, many things from the past that they knew. That is not so surprising really. What about Atlantis ?
 

philebus

Exactly what shade we understand to be purple now is not quite the same as that in ancient Greece, which was much more red than blue. Other shades existed but I'm not sure how far the conformed to our modern purple.

As much as they got wrong, there is still much to be found in ancient texts that is still relevant to today's thinking. Lucretius' understanding of time and our relation to it is another of those, supported by much temporal philosophy and physics today. Cosmopolitanism has much to be said for it (it is a position that I subscribe to) and modern philosophy has seen a return to virtue theory among many ethicists - Aristotle's Ethics remains an important work to study today. Plato's Theatetus is still important with regard to empiricism and relativism - as well as being the best example of philosophy that I have ever read. His Republic is still required reading and not for nostalgia or background, much of what he had to say on politics and metaphysics is still important - for all the mistakes to be found there.

On the subject of Plato, I rather think that he invented Atlantis, although there is a strong case that he based it upon stories of the Minoan culture whose island settlements were probably destroyed by tsunami following a volcanic eruption.

I won't suggest that we can't overestimate the importance of ancient philosophy but I do believe that it is often underestimated. Sadly, too few have heard of Epicurus or Lucretius, and what people now understand by stoicism, cynicism, hedonism, virtue and cosmopolitanism is a faint shadow from the past.

Nothing really changes because human nature is the same now as it was in the ancient world, we must remember that the charges made against Socrates were of impiety and corrupting the youth. It can be enough to rob us of hope but then, that these people existed and fought against the tides, is reason to cling to it after all.
 

frelkins

Philebus is right on the money. Between Epicurus & Lucretius you've got a nice portion of modern physics (& post-modern theory for that matter) covered. Notice how L. describes the way atoms hold together -- they have little "hooks." If the hooks are not "congruent in shape" the atoms won't hold together, so some combinations of atoms aren't possible. Think about the hooks as charge and the forces. The ancients didn't have modern math or instruments, but they had thousands of years of really smart people OBSERVING things. If you are smart, and think a lot, OBSERVING can get you far. :)

This is the part where the application to tarot comes in . . . ;)
 

Melanchollic

re-pete-a said:
Hi all , just been reading the the book, LUCRETIUS, ON THE NATURE OF THINGS. 100- 50 BC. ....

....The four fundamental elements ,fire, air , water, earth as the basic building blocks has been rebuked , and Atoms with spaces between has been raised.



Plato defined the classical elements as not being "building blocks", or actual substances, but differences in quality, quite a bit earlier in Timaeus (360 BC.).

This is why I say, think of the elements as 'adjectives', not as 'nouns'. As far as I know, the fundamental qualities that the classical elements are adjectively describing; expansion, contraction, flexibility, rigidity, etc., have yet to be rebuked.
 

re-pete-a

There's no judgement towards the discoveries of the great minds in existance both then and now. It's just odd that the dusts of time keep blowing away.The uncoverings of ancient knowledge tends to show how slow a foreward direction has been . Saddening .
 

frelkins

Melanchollic said:
Plato defined the classical elements as not being "building blocks", or actual substances, but differences in quality, quite a bit earlier in Timaeus (360 BC.).


Yes yes yes Mel, but the doctrine or idea of elements goes back to Empedocles. Lucretius, in Book 1 of De rerum, does explicitly deny this doctrine of the elements. He is a determinist, a materialist, and an atomist. You may not like it, but Lucretius is quite plain: he refutes Heraclitus, Empedocles, Plato and Anaxagoras to boot. Sorry. He's an Epicurean. That's just what they believed. They ancients did not agree. There were many schools of thought.
 

re-pete-a

Thanks for that comment,Frelkins. Didn't know how to put it. well put.
 

Melanchollic

If I recall, Lucretius' material on 'physics' kept pretty close to Epicurus' On Nature, which makes him a rather minor player.

Of course, Epicurus disagreed with many of Plato's ideas. I don't think he actually "refuted" anything, as the word means to "prove false".

Keep in mind, even the previous century's scientific idea of 'atoms' was at best a construct to explain the way phenomenon are behaving. The 1920's schoolbook illustrations of atoms is now a rather humorous representation. The particle model, while good, didn't explain all phenomenon. So, if anything is being 'refuted', it is the idea that everything in the universe is made up of tiny particles.

http://www.blazelabs.com/f-p-prop.asp
 

philebus

I'm not sure that I would want to describe Epicureanism as being "devoid of a sense of virtue", it is flawed, as you say, in great part because of its insular attitude. The stoic cosmopolitianism also drew away from loyalty to nation, but broadening that social responsibility to be universal and that is my own position.

I don't subscribe to it but hedonism is hard to escape, even Plato had to address it properly in the Philebus (which is not why I took the name), it remains a major force in Utilitarianism and happiness is at the root of Aristotle's virtues. Epicurus seems important to me in ethics because he also presents a more sophisticated hedonism. Hedonist or not, the pursuit of happiness is a part of life and philosophy.

If I remember correctly, it was Lucretius' position on fear of death that was interesting because it was tied to a broader understanding of time and our relationship to it - something that influenced the position of Derek Parfit in Reasons and Persons (and although I'm not a utilitarian, I would recommend this to everyone). He seemed to require that we take a timeless view of our lives, that the non-existence after our death is no different from that before our birth and so we should not fear it.