Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!shadooby!accuvax.nwu.edu!mccoy
From: mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu (Jim McCoy )
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Making fires and making minds - the laws of physics prevail
Message-ID: <689@accuvax.nwu.edu>
Date: 12 May 89 04:03:51 GMT
References: <3019@tank.uchicago.edu> <18020@cup.portal.com> <2879@cps3xx.UUCP>
Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu
Reply-To: mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu (Jim McCoy )
Organization: Northwestern Univ. Evanston, Il.
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In article <2879@cps3xx.UUCP> wallingf@cpsvax.UUCP (Eugene Wallingford) writes:
>In article <18020@cup.portal.com> Daniel B. Hankins writes:
>
>>
>>     'Man is the measure of all things' is a recent idea, stemming largely
>       --------------------------------
>>from Judeo-Christian notions of the place of Man in the Universe.  Some
>>cultures still do not share it.  No wonder our distant ancestors believed
>>that free will can be ascribed in equal measure to all active and
>>capricious things, from animals to weather.
>>
> 
>Just a side note...  I believe it was Protagoras who made this point
>the cornerstaone of his philosophy.  When and where did Protagoras live?
>As I also recall from a distant philosophy class, this notion fell out
>of favor with most metaphysicians for a particular reason.  Can anyone
>fill me in?

	You are correct.  Protagoras was a Greek philosohper who lived in
the 5th century BC (i think ...) who proposed this idea.  This is the
cornerstone of the competitive nature of the greek system, and you
will find this idea laced through-out the works of plato, and others
of this era (the "Golden Age of Greece").  This was in NO way a
judeo-christian idea and had been around for a LONG time.
	This idea was used to supplant the nature of the greek
religious system (not openly, of course), for using this
justification, one could no longer claim that everything was the work
of the gods or because of devine will.  Previous to this, it is
beleived that the fundemental nature of the greek religious system was
based on a quid pro quo nature with the gods:  if you performed a
sacrifice (using the proper ceremony) the god would grant you a favor,
but if the ceremony was performed wrong (or not enough was sacrificed)
then disaster would befall you.  This system made it very easy to
place blame on devine will ("It wasn't my fault, Apollo was jealous of
the sacrifice Pericles made to Zues yesterday and was not in the mood
to grant me a boon").
	But, this digress into classics and need a quick push back
onto track.  BTW, what was the original topic :-)

					jim


------------------------------< Jim McCoy >------------------------------------
mccoy@accuvax.nwu.edu               |  "...far too many notes for my taste"
.oddjob!nucsrl!blekko!holmes!mccoy |        -Phantom of the Opera
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