Re: Anachronisms in LOTR

Raven wrote:

>    As for the rise and fall of ancient Greek science, I have read only one
> telling of the tale, namely that given by Carl Sagan in "Cosmos".  Their
> science rose because they were a democratic society of merchants, exposing
> themselves to many cultures, letting go of the concept of The Truth as an
> authority-mandated belief.  And their science fell because they were not
> really democratic; in particular, they had slaves, which led to arrogance
> against manual work - such as experiments - and applause of purely cerebral
> work, as befitted gentlemen, and also because they considered science to be
> the province of an elite of educated nobility, not to be shared with the
> unwashed masses.  I don't know if this analysis holds water.

I loved Carl Sagans utter devotion to the Greeks, as a scientific 
devotee of them.  I think he (as many scholars typically do) overrated 
their importance, but that is done by almost everybody who delves into 
their culture only.

Incidentally, these are 2 different Greeks: the ones who devised science 
were the Ionians, from the Islands off Asia.  They were the merchants, 
with a practical mind etc.  Their political model of city states ruled 
by tyrants under a despotic king was spread eastward in the Middle East 
under Alexander the Great: the Hellenistic city states.

The Greeks who presided over the decline of Greece were the mainland 
Greeks, and they had slaves and their theory was that of the natural 
inferiority of all other races theory etc.  Eventually these Greeks 
spread their culture westward and ended up being slaves in Rome being 
better educated than the Romans, but their slaves nonetheless, and the 
seeds of their science fell on the stony ground of Roman schoolchildren, 
and they never bore any fruit again there.  They did eventually bear 
fruit in the Middle East when the Arabs took their learning to heart, 
but that was a millenium later.


Hasan

> Korax.