On 20/03/2009, at 6:37 PM, Bruno Marchal wrote:
>>
>> Creativity has been the victim of repression in western thinking
>> since
>> Socrates, who, along with Plato and Aristotle are the sods
>> responsible
>> for giving us the our critical-thinking-dominated and design-energy-
>> deficient thinking system.
>
> ?
>
Perhaps I should do better. The last Renaissance revived and polished
the methods of Socrates and the other thinkers of the pre-Roman
universe. The way the knowledge was re-assimilated was with a heavy
flavouring of Roman fascism. The mathematical universe of Islam and
the pre-Islamic thinkers had to be accommodated as well. The argument
method (not the only method of exploring a terrain of ideas) was
perhaps in use before, but Socrates had developed it into a formidable
procedure.
I am mainly concerned with the effect of Socrates. Pythagoras and
Plotinus and all the other guys you love are in the pantheon of
mathematicians - they are the "Good Greeks". These guys knew how to
ask the right questions. Socrates knew less about asking questions but
he knew a hell of a lot about giving answers. Socrates never asked
fishing questions. ("Fishing question": a real and honest demand for
information; you don't know if the fish will bite, where, when etc.)
Socrates only asked "Hunting questions". ("Hunting question": when you
have the animal - the target - in your sights.) Socrates wanted people
to confirm his opinions which he would hoodwink everybody into
imagining were the morally responsible ones to hold.
"You wouldn't elect your best athletes by lot now would you?"
"No we wouldn't"
"So why would you elect your politicians by lot?"
The required response is embedded in the comparison; a fake
comparison. The technique involves taking two really quite different
things and making them appear the same. Its a kind of a magic trick.
Works every time. However, there may well be excellent reasons for
electing politicians anonymously (risk of bribery, corruption etc.)
Pure sophistry. I love it. Aristotle was simply wrong so no need to
bother with him anymore.
But then, Socrates never set out to be a constructive thinker. He is
nowhere as imaginative as Plotinus and Pythagoras. Socrates' purpose
was to attack and remove 'rubbish'. Socrates will show brilliantly
that all suggestions offered are wrong or faulty in some way. Not ONCE
does Socrates offer a better idea. "Not My Job" rules with him. "I am
not here to help you forge ideas I am here to help you find the true
ideas, the ones you can trust. Its just that you have to come with the
ideas I criticise." He seemed to believe that if you simply attack
what is wrong, or in error, then what you are left with will be true
and trustworthy. This has left us with our obsession with criticism.
There is a remarkable paradox in how the revival of Greek argument
thinking in the last Renaissance served a dual purpose. On the one
hand, humanistic thinkers used the system of reason and logic to
attack the dogma that suffocated society. On the other hand, Church
thinkers led by Thomas Aquinas developed the same argument logic into
a powerful way of defeating numerous heresies that were forever
surfacing. This argument/logic type of thinking became standard in
seminaries, universities and schools. The paradox is that Church
thinkers and non-Church (humanistic) thinkers found equal value in the
methods. Perhaps this is not too surprising given that the new methods
were a clear and obvious advance on the existing ones.
>
>
>> OK - so get the bloody Athenian Academy
>> doors yanked open and let's get this thing sorted out by golly! You
>> have great reverence for Greek thinking, Bruno - I just want to slap
>> them all around the gills for their lack of design, their lack of
>> creative, generative thinking energy.
>
>
> You try to provoke me, I guess. I am not so much reverent with all
> the Greeks. You know that I believe that Aristotle was wrong on
> metaphysics, or at least responsible for the beginning of the
> departure from rational mysticism and Platonism.
>
>
Of course - I merely continue the triage of defective ancient Greek
thinkers by one more Greek. Plato and Pythagoras and Plotinus and
Euclid are all in the mathematic pantheon and above reproach (I won't
forgive Plato the slaves or the fascination with Sparta, though). I am
rather concerned with the legacy of Socrates though. The Greeks
bequeathed us argument and democracy and we have wanted to keep the
two together ever since because nobody can conceive of how to operate
a democracy without argument. Plato gave us "the Truth" which we are
always said to be after. So our traditional thinking system is like
that: it is based on the search for "the truth". It was never a case
of being in search of "the best design". Truth has to be uncovered and
checked by logic and argument (supplemented by statistics and other
methods). The result is a strong tendency toward negativity and
attack; the very nadir of creativity in other words. Negativity and
fear are seen to be a powerful way of uncovering the truth or,
securing compliance with somebody's definition of it. Negativity and
attack can also provide the attacker with a very seductive and
addictive feeling of satisfaction as well. The Crusades were an
exercise in taking all of this for a jolly walk.
>
>
>> It's all argument bloody
>> argument.
>
>
> That is what I like. I appreciate arguments. It is my way.
What's wrong with a simple discussion? Why does there always have to
be a winner and a loser? Why do we have to make like adversaries when
what we want to do is share perceptions and explore a topic? Why can't
there be as many theories about something as heads in the room? We all
lay out our piece of the mosaic and in the end we have the Big
Picture. I try not to confuse thinking with perception. Argument, as
the executive function of critical (vertical) thinking lacks design
energy. Argument makes you right, that's all. Nothing is constructed
or created by argument. Argument was never for the purpose of
generating new ideas. Argument was invented to weed out all the
inferior or incorrect ideas as a way of having some confidence in what
is probably an arbitrary conclusion locked in by the original choice
of premises anyway. Remember, after Goedel, any argument is only as
good as its starting premises which can never be proved from within
the argument.
>
>
>
>> I am right sir and you are wrong sir! The truth lies with
>> me! No sir it is you who are wrong sir!
>
>
> Not at all. Once we argument, we never have to talk on who is right
> or wrong. We let people figure out by themselves. Science is doubt
> and doubt and doubt, and always doubt. Certainty and conviction is
> madness. Plato never pretends to be right. He presents points of
> view and people discussing and trying to solve problems, like "what
> is knowledge" in the Theaetetus.
OK - you are being very scholarly in your deployment of this word
"argument". I do feel there is more, much more though, to the
scientific method than just criticism and attack. A hypothesis arises
in the first place as an act of imagination.
>
>
>
>
>> You are without merit! So what
>> have these two guys created while yelling at each other?
>
> The scientific attitude, in all direction, including mystic
> experiences. It last for 8 century, and stopped when Justinien close
> the academy of Plato in Athen. It never really came back, although a
> few bits survive in the middle east and bubbled out in Europa later.
> Just a little bit. The main fundamental inquiry (theology) did
> remain in the hand of the "authorities", making both science and
> religion a sort of religion. We are still, and actually more and
> more so, victim of that schizophrenia.
So - there it is. Just as I say - the Church banished creativity and
the creative interpretation of information. People were forbidden to
use conceptual imagination in understanding data. Creativity was seen
as evil and suspect and the work of sorcerers and witches and
alchemists. Anybody who could "think" in the medieval period better
have good connections in society. As soon as "thinking" came back into
fashion at the Renaissance, the Church once again felt threatened by
rising levels of education in society and in some very direct sense,
this is WHY the Church invented school. To impart the "right"
knowledge to those who had the right beliefs. We cannot underestimate
the extent to which education today is the product of this miserable
state of affairs.
In Japan, where there was never any exposure to Hellenistic or Arabic
or Roman influences, it turned out rather differently. The Japanese
never wasted any time arguing about the rights and the wrongs of
anything. The Japanese method was to encourage everyone to think how
everything might be improved and to trial as many ideas as possible. A
high failure rate of ideas must be envisaged in this style, but the
result is that innovation and design-thinking is encouraged.
K
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Received on Fri Mar 20 2009 - 07:20:28 PDT