I started this for a friend of mine. It still needs some work, probably some review by a better historian than me. It's been a hobby for a while, but it's turning out to be more applicable to the world's political problems. We have always fought over resources, and pondering our existence needs some time of peaceful reflection. To have that, someone else needed to be protecting borders and working to create that stability.
The same forces that create civilization often are the ones that destroy other civilizations. Centuries of this have led to scientific exploration into how the mind works and where we came from. The questions that appeared on cave walls. What we're finding is, feelings and intuitions are more central consciousness than we thought.
Pre-History
Before written language, we can see from archaeological
evidence that people were influencing each other in non-violent ways, implying
some reflection on who they are and what type of future they desire
Axial Age 8th to 3rd centuries BC
3000 BC
The early books by Homer and the Epic of Gilgamesh show us how they were thinking about the meaning of life, how to organize society,
and what it is to be good.
To develop a robust philosophy that could challenge empires,
civilization first needed to develop. One of those empires fell, but left
behind a middle class, and was isolated enough to stay intact and for them to organize
themselves and trade with neighbors. The advancement of a language that was
easier to learn and could be used across disciplines, helped put the authority
of words above gods and kings.
The
Origins of Greek Philosophy » Internet Infidels
500 BC
The Pre-Socratics then Socrates, Plato, Aristotle are well
documented, so I won’t regurgitate that here.
Hindu Buddhist had a tradition of emptiness, as in ‘empty
the mind’ that led to the use of “0” in linguistics. Silent beats also occurred
in music, eventually inspiring Brahmagupta to create zero and negative numbers.
I mention this as an example of how ideas precede inventions and innovations
that become part of our worldview.
As we’ll see in a bit, it takes more some literature and
good ideas to develop philosophy that can support democracy and increase
cooperation on a world scale. The East didn’t have the ideas the Greeks had,
and the Roman Empire was collapsing. Philosophy was preserved but didn’t
advance for a thousand years.
Indigenous people might have had a better sense of intuition
and a better relationship with the natural world, but without written language and
widespread travel, those ideas didn’t spread. They remained tied up with their
mythology and were almost lost when Western philosophy promoted colonization in
the name of progress. This is not just an aside, it is significant. It’s only
in the last 100 years of advancements in neuroscience that we are beginning to
see the errors of viewing ourselves as creatures separate from our environment,
and worse, ones with dominion over it.
700
The Islamic world had a Golden Age around 750-950AD with
improvements in agriculture, poetry, arts, synthesis of crafts across the Asian
and European continents and even the beginnings of Calculus. But they continued
to be driven by the desire to conquer. They held Greek writings but very few
people could read the language anymore. Averroes was tasked with squaring the
secular logic of that philosophy and the Islamic scripture. Internal threats of
despotic Caliphs and Clerics like Al-Ghazali and external threats like the
Mongols eventually brought down the empire.
1100
Judaism had been pushed out of the East by Islam, but they
were allowed to live and work within that empire. Sects ranged from strict
adherence of Jewish laws to the more philosophical. Maimonides attempted to apply
ancient ideas to the emerging modern thinking.
As that was happening, Europe was just starting to crawl out
of the mud and mount a challenge to the long domination of the Catholic Church.
Early humanist Christians interpreted the Bible with more compassionate themes.
Thomas Aquinas continued the work that Judaism and Islam had been doing and
found himself in trouble with the Condemnations of 1277. Fifty years after he
died, in 1323, he was canonized as a saint. Some view this period as a time of
horrible oppression of scientific advancement by the Church. Others say it was
moment when the Church agreed to let that knowledge continue to grow, as long
as they didn’t get their noses into the miracles of God and Jesus.
This is a good time to take a break from history and go over
just where philosophy fits in the spectrum of human thought and knowledge. People
who are working on discovering the wonders of creation are still called
“natural philosophers” at this time, but where is the line between philosophy
and science?
Is
Philosophy Stupid? (richardcarrier.info)
1500
With more riches coming into Europe, a class of people who
could do nothing but think about life started coming up with new ways of viewing
the human condition. Descartes famous “I think therefore I am” stands out. This
left many unanswered questions. Descartes attempt at answering them included
thinking up a “perfect being” that must exist. It was an advancement in that we
began to look at ourselves as thinking beings, instead of purely driven by the
whims of gods or magic, but it has also come to be known as the “Cartesian
error”.
With the challenges to the three major religions and the
empires they were tied to, and the growing merchant class, and world travel, the
stage is finally set for science. So many changes happened within a few
centuries, that it’s hard to pin down just what they were and how to label
them. Richard Carrier does a pretty good job of that.
What
Exactly Was the Scientific Revolution? • Richard Carrier
1650
I couldn’t talk about philosophy without mentioning Spinoza.
Although he maintained his loyalty to the Judaism to his dying day, he has been
called a pantheist. His logical proofs have supported many philosophies of “God
is everything”.
Enlightenment
Durkheim 1858-1917
Darwin, Origin of Species published 1859
Camus
The Boy Who Knew Infinity
Robert Sapolsky Bonobo
and the Atheist
Frans de Waal
EO Wilson What
We Do - This View Of Life
