Scientism is defined as the fundamentalist pseudoscientific and pseudoskeptic belief that contemporary science is infallible.
I take the exact opposite view -- namely Prisca Sapientia i.e. the heresy of ancient wisdom.
"There is no teaching, but only recollection." -- Plato, philosopher, Meno, 380 B.C.
"Your favorite doctrine, Socrates, that knowledge is simply recollection, if true, also necessarily implies a previous time in which we learned that which we now recollect." -- Plato, philosopher, Phaedo, 360 B.C.
"... all the men in history who have really done anything with the future have had their eyes fixed on the past. I need not mention the Renaissance, the very word proves my case. The originality of Michael Angelo and Shakespeare began with digging up old vases and manuscripts." -- G. K. Chesterton, writer, What's Wrong With the World, Chapter IV: The Fear of the Past, 1910
"The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato." -- Alfred N. Whitehead, mathematician/philosopher, 1929
"During the past three or four hundred years science has been rediscovered rather than discovered." -- Andrew Tomas, author, We Are Not the First, 1971
"Our science has only rediscovered and perfected old ideas." -- Andrew Tomas, author, We Are Not the First, 1971
"...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
"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 trasmitted by an archetypal figure--say, for example, Moses--and then passed down through the 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
"If you look at practically any of the writings of ancient civilizations, the ancient Sanskrit writings of India are the ones I'm most familiar with, speak of spaceships, of weapons resembling our modern weapons, they had, apparently, the ability to look inside the human embryo and see what was going on, so, it appears, yes, ancient peoples did have quite a bit of knowledge that perhaps, some of it that we're rediscovering." -- Michael A. Cremo, author, August 2006
"Personally I believe that when we really understand this Mill and how it works we will find out where we are in time and that's something that's very precious that I think has been lost by this linear view that anything that came before us must be more primitive. With that view, there's really nothing that we can learn in ancient history." -- Walter Cruttenden, author, October 2008
OIM,
ReplyDeleteScientism as defined by you, the beamfucked is as the fundamentalist pseudoscientific and pseudoskeptic belief that contemporary science is infallible.
There is no difference in beliefs whether it is in science, wimps, devils, etc.
KV:
ReplyDeleteWhy are you such a dope?
OilIsMastery:
ReplyDeleteYou didn't pick up on what I was talking about in the earlier thread: The possibility of ancient knowledge, if so, how was it transmitted to today, and what is the ultimate source of that knowledge.
And since knowledge is power and powerful people attempt to retain their power, which people are the ones who have this knowledge and how do they try to keep it secret. And, perhaps, more important, how do they attempt to use (or actually use) this knowledge (power) for their own benefit, to the exclusion of other people.
Think about it, instead of blurting out something about "angels".
(Let's have fun and think outside the box.)
Anaconda,
ReplyDeleteWhy are you such a morbidly ignorant?
The Greeks certainly didn't understand things the way we do. I admit that they were clever, but we have a better hold on knowledge as individuals and as a culture than they did.
ReplyDeleteFor example:
Choiniere, J., Xu, X., Clark, J., Forster, C., Guo, Y., & Han, F. (2010). A Basal Alvarezsauroid Theropod from the Early Late Jurassic of Xinjiang, China. Science, 327 (5965), 571-574 DOI: 10.1126/science.1182143
They could not have produced this sort of evidence for development. The best they could have done was to have said "Things were different in the past, birds once walked on the ground like everything else."
Anaconda,
ReplyDeleteI think I follow you now.
Yes I suspect that elites do deliberately withhold knowledge in order to retain power.
The former CEO of Skunkworks has said so publicly.
"We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity.... Anything you can imagine, we already know how to do." -- Benjamin R. Rich, aeronautical engineer, 1995
Jeffery,
ReplyDeleteWhat about the advanced civilizations that preceded the Greeks like the Atlanteans?
Did they even exist? If so, where is the non-anecdotal evidence of their existance?
ReplyDeletePlastics, space telescopes, early holocene hadron colliders? All we see are piles of stone. No actual technological remains at all.
I'll tell you where it is.
In your fevered imagination. You are so dissafected by mainstream science, you jump on any bit of mythical nonsense that comes along and declare it to be scienctific fact.
If you were doing it for religious reasons, I could respect that, but you do it to dump on the fine work being done my modern men and women who've labored their whole lives to improve yours.
OIM,
ReplyDeletePrisca Sapientia – sacred wisdom
…[Newton] believed that many ancient sources were endowed with sacred wisdom and that the proportions of many of their temples were in themselves sacred. This belief would lead Newton to examine many architectural works of Hellenistic Greece, as well as Roman sources such as Vitruvius, in a search for their occult knowledge. This concept, often termed "prisca sapientia" (sacred wisdom), was a common belief of many scholars during Newton's lifetime. (from Wiki)
And not heresy of ancient wisdom, as you defined it.
JK,
For OIM and his kind, Prisca Sapientia, is a code word for creationism; if Plato’s works were only recollections of past knowledge, then the “past knowledge” itself would be a recollection of something still further back in the past, and so on, until ultimately we wind up with a creation, and creator, whose past we may not question, unless we want to invoke the wrath of the beamfuckers who would comedown and throw hot rocks and steal our fair maidens...
Life Arose in the Heat Gradients of Hydrothermal Vents
ReplyDeleteJeffery,
ReplyDelete"Did they even exist?"
According to history. However if you believe in scientism then you don't believe in history.
"...I believe it is only fair to acknowledge an underlying and totally sincere scientific disbelief in the historical record." -- Ralph E. Juergens, engineer, 1972
"If so, where is the non-anecdotal evidence of their existance?"
You honestly think that between 200,000 B.C. and 5,000 B.C. nothing happened?
"Plastics, space telescopes, early holocene hadron colliders? All we see are piles of stone. No actual technological remains at all."
Same is true of the Nazis and World War II.
"I mean, there were huge battles that took place in Europe during World War II. And you can go back to those places now. I mean, there should be, you know, just tons of equipment and stuff lying around. But it's not there. You can hardly find a thing. So I think, over millions of years, there can be a lot of destruction." -- Michael A. Cremo, author, August 2006
"I'll tell you where it is.
In your fevered imagination."
Do you also think the Nazis are my imagination?
While there has been suppression of some ancient knowledge, there is also obfuscation via the Rosicrucians, freemasonry etc. Some are diverted while others are given some knowledge.
ReplyDeleteInteresting what happened with the museums in Baghdad for example. Who was in control at the time? What has disappeared?
This may merely relate to senile trillionaires seeking artefacts that do not exist, but when a museum is plundered, it suggests wholesale sacking to disguise what actually was sought?
OIM,
ReplyDeleteYou quoted: ".... I mean, there should be, you know, just tons of equipment and stuff lying around. But it's not there...."
Most metals were recycled. You can still find mines in the forests...
And, you can sit on a concrete wall to find your ass burned by mustard chemical agent permeating through your clothes...
And you can go to museums and compare the old vs. rebuild stuff all over the Europe, Russia, China, Japan...
The problem is that you and your kinds have no problem in lying, intentionally.
See if you can answer this:
Let us assume that all the BS you propagate is true, but, how does it change anything in our condition today?
Finally, how is it that our recollection fails us in recalling "the ancient knowledge"?
It is really Lilles time for you.
Fungus FitzJuggler III:
ReplyDeleteYou're a perceptive guy :-)
Just so long as we can keep 95% playing by the rules then we can remain at the top 5%.
ReplyDelete